Class ^Li£^_i_:£±' 

Book 

GoFight]^°_ 

COPTOIGHT DEPCSfT. 



Imptimi poitfiU 

ANTONIUS MAAS, S.J. 
Praepositus Prov. Marylandiae — Neo-Eboracensis 

i^i^il obistat: 

REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.D., 

Censor 

Imprimatur: 

►J^ JOANNES CARDINALIS FARLEY 

Archiepiscopus Neo-Eboracensis 



Die 2, Nov,, 19U 



MUSTARD SEED 

SOME PUNGENT PARAGRAPHS 



MUSTARD SEED 

SOME PUNGENT PARAGRAPHS 



FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J. 

AUTHOR OF WATCHING AN HOUR, HEART OF THE GOSPEL 
HEART OF REVELATION, ETC. 



NEW YORK 
P. J. KENEDY & SONS 
1914 



Us 



COPYRIGHT, I914 
BY P. J. KENEDY & SONS 



NOV 27 1914 

©CLA387688 



TWO PARABLES AND A 
REQUEST 



ERE is the first parable! "To what 
shall we liken the Kingdom of God? 
, Or to what parable shall we compare 



it? It is as a grain of mustard-seed, which 
when it is sown in the earth is less than all 
the seeds that are in the earth. And when 
it is sown, it groweth up and becometh greater 
than all herbs and shooteth out great branches, 
so that the birds of the air may dwell under 
the shadow thereof." Mustard-seed suggests 
pungency to us, but for the Jews to whom our 
Lord spoke this parable, the mustard-seed was 
proverbial of something minute. Perhaps the 
reader may admit that these reprinted papers 
deserve such a collective title because of mod- 
ern as well as ancient suggestions, but may 
deem them immoderately ambitious if they 
claim further resemblance to the gospel mus- 
tard-seed and aspire to that importance which 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Two Paeables and a Request v 

Self-Excouragemext 1 

Childishness of Soul 7 

Tk^ching a Man His Place 13 

It HL-ls Slain its Ten Thousands 19 

Fuming and Fretting 25 

A Universal Genius 31 

Nagging 37 

They Ai^o Ran 43 

Seeing Ourselves 49 

What Do They Say? 55 

Faster, Faster! 61 

Chaffing 69 

Too Proud to be Vain 75 

The Fact of the Matter Is 81 

Bettering Bad Bargains 87 

The Mites and the Mighty 93 

A Novel Pope 99 

Chuckling to Oneself 105 

Not at Home Ill 

You Were Right 117 

Starting a Conversation . . . 123 

Publicity as a Panacea 129 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Nobody Cares 135 

Borrowing Trouble 141 

Will-Hygiene . . . 147 

Talking to Oneself 153 

Just as You Say 159 

Equipment of a Soul-Critic 165 

Giant Oaks from Little Acorns 171 

Stooping to Conquer 177 

I Have Made up My Mind 183 

Lilliputian Spirits 189 

Giving Bad Names 195 

You Begin 201 

I Want to Know 207 



SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT 



SELF- ENCOURAGEMENT 



^ 1 1 ^HE encouragement of others is one of 
the most useful, the noblest, the 
Jl holiest occupations a man could take 
up. The columns of life are filled with want 
advertisements clamoring for the commodity. 
Ninety-nine out of a hundred want en- 
couragement all the time, and the hundredth 
wants encouragement for only twenty-three 
hours and fifty-nine minutes every day. 
The radium supply is scarce and hard to 
get; the supply of encouragement is more 
limited because no one gives encouragement 
and everybody wants and needs it. There 
is only one thing to be done. You must 
make up your mind to encourage yourself. 
Take yourself aside and reason with yourself 
earnestly. Laugh away fears, dismiss idle 
regrets, pick yourself up, shake off the dust, 
dry from the eyes the blinding tears, say some- 
thing cheerful to yourself, put on a new smile, 



4 



MUSTARD SEED 



slap yourself on the back, light up a bright 
flame of hope, give another turn to the crank, 
and away you go with new vim and new 
energy. 

Perhaps you will say that you do make an 
attempt at self-encouragement, but you con- 
fess to failure. It is likely you are flattering 
yourself or coaxing or deceiving yourself, and 
not truly encouraging yourself. You do not 
go deep enough. Encouragement, according 
to the makers of dictionaries, means putting 
heart into one. Courage and encouragement 
are allied in derivation and every-day life. 
You can not rear the solid structure of en- 
couragement on the unstable foundation of 
self-deception. You can not put fiber into a 
rotten log by putting on it a veneer of oak; 
you must put into it a heart of oak. 

Have you ever gone into the heart of this 
subject.^ Do you know what is the source of 
nine-tenths of the world's supply of discourage- 
ment? You will promptly answer dyspepsia. 
You are wrong. That is the source of the 
one-tenth. The nine-tenths are due to pride 
and to the most cowardly species of pride, 
human respect. If a man slips and falls on 



SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT 



5 



the sidewalk, he looks around to find out 
whether he has been seen. If not, he brushes 
himself off, goes on his way and forgets all 
about the fall. But if one person saw him, 
and especially if many witnessed his plight, 
he will rehearse the different details of it to 
himself, caricature every part of it as it appears 
to others, will indulge in profanity, or be 
tempted to, will memorialize the newspapers, 
the mayor, the city commissioners, will make 
his fall a perpetual grievance, and declare 
emphatically, finally, with clenched fist and 
red face, that he will never expose himself to 
such a ludicrous mishap again. He is dis- 
couraged from walking because the crowd 
laughed. Now, is not that a parable giving 
the history of most discouragement? 

The first thing, then, that the self-encourager 
must do is to forget the other man's sneer or 
laugh. Geologists revel in the mysteries of 
erosion, and they will tell you how a little 
pebble may be spun around on a large rock by 
the current of a stream, until it has worn a 
cavity which they call a pot-hole. Pride keeps 
the stream of consciousness playing on one 
failure until it has eroded a cavity of dis- 



6 



MUSTARD SEED 



couragement in the soul. Cut oflE the stream; 
forget the failure. Don't resort to artificial 
means for forgetting. Dutch courage is not 
the best kind of bravery and the Dutch en- 
couragement of alcohol, or the Chinese en- 
couragement of opium, or any other drug, 
merely postpones the encouragement. When 
the tide goes out, the corpse will be there worse 
than before. 

Control your imagination as well as your 
memory. Take your difficulties on the install- 
ment plan. A man may swallow deadly poison 
safely if he does but graduate the doses. The 
devil knows well how a vivid imagination, 
terrified by the prospect of a long evil, may 
benumb a resolute soul. He said to Ignatius 
Loyola: "You can't keep this up for fifty or 
sixty years." "Fifty or sixty years!" replied 
the Saint, "Who promises me that length of 
life? I'll keep this up till noon, and if alive 
then, I will hold on till evening." 

SeK-encouragement is the serum for tramps 
and degenerates and applicants for divorce and 
intending suicides, and for everybody else. 
Use it often. 



CHILDISHNESS OF SOUL 



CHILDISHNESS OF SOUL 

GROWN people do not usually sit down 
for a good, long cry, but they often 
resort to something that amounts to 
the same. There are no tears, it is true; 
there is no wet handkerchief, but there is 
a weeping in the soul beyond the reach of 
handkerchief. Spiritual tears are often shed 
copiously. A humihation has occurred. We 
have been lowered somehow to the dust. 
Someone has crossed us or been preferred to 
us or has succeeded where we failed or where 
we know we should fail if we tried. In a word, 
something has gone wrong in our life, and we 
go apart and grow gloomy and begin to sulk 
and pout in spirit. Sometimes, even with a 
smile on the face, the soul weeps, and there is 
no attempt made to check the flow of tears. 
Rather do we nurse our grief and make a pet 
of it. 

A child will nurse and pet a doll, crooning 



10 



MUSTARD SEED 



over it and talking to it. Our humiliation, 
our grief of soul, is our doll. We keep it in 
recollection and press it closely to the heart 
of our heart. Are we not still children in the 
life of the soul.^^ Are we not still in the nursery 
of the spiritual life.^ A towel with a large knot 
for a head makes a doll for children. As trivial 
a thing will make a doll for the spiritual nurs- 
ery. Ah, when shall we put off the things of 
childhood and grow too old for nurslings or 
dolls of any sort.^^ When shall we cast aside 
the ugly little dolls of jealousy and wounded 
pride, the prettily painted dolls of vanity, all 
those playthings of the spirit that in our gloomy 
moments we nurse and fondle.^ When? At 
the moment our souls grow to the age of 
manhood. 

Pride keeps the soul in childhood; humility 
will age it. Pride is blinding and deceitful; 
humility loves the truth and lets Hght into the 
soul. If we are ever to grow old in soul, we 
must cease letting ourselves be deceived by 
pride. In the child the imagination is active. 
It can dress up a knotted rag to the grandeur 
of a queen by means of the wardrobe, which 
childish fancy keeps well stocked. Thread- 



CHILDISHNESS OF SOUL 11 



bare cloth becomes costly silk; the frayed edge 
changes to royal ermine, and bone or celluloid 
buttons are crystallized into brilliant dia- 
monds. TVTiat imagination is for the child- 
hood of man, pride is for the childhood of the 
soul — a changer, a magnifier, an exaggerator, 
a deceiver. The tiny affront, the slight rebuke, 
the insignificant neglect are changed by the 
magnifying eyes of pride into the bitter insult, 
the undeserved reproof, the basest and black- 
est ingratitude. **That was uncalled for," 
says pride. '*Why am I treated in this way?" 
Then, after nursing the wrong, "It is a shame." 
More fondling of the grievance; then, "It is 
an outrage." Again pride turns to pet its little 
doll and cries, "It is an unbearable crime." 
No, pride, it is a knotted rag that you have been 
making a queen out of. Throw it aside for a 
while, put it out of your memory; take a walk 
out into God's fresh air, and under His blue 
sky send up to Him a prayer or two, and when 
you come back, sane and sober, and take an- 
other look at your nursling, you will say: 
"TMiy, it is only a rag." 

So humility, the truth-teller, gives age to 
the soul. Tell me how old you are in humility. 



12 



MUSTARD SEED 



and I will tell you how old you are in the life 
of the spirit. Humility is the virtue that has 
a place for everything and puts everything and 
everybody in the proper place — God first, 
creation second. It leaves appearances and 
attains realities. It admits virtues while it is 
not blind to defects. So it strips off the dis- 
guises of pride and finds that much, if not all, 
of the humiliation we fume at, was deserved, 
that the ingratitude is imaginary, that the 
rebuke, affront, or neglect was not as bad as 
pride tricks it out to be. Humility takes off the 
green spectacles of jealousy and the dark ones 
of resentment. Its sight needs no corrective; 
or if it should happen at any time to be weak, 
then it uses the clear, transparent glasses of 
charity, the best medium for correcting short- 
sightedness on the subject of others' good 
qualities, the crystalline lens that reveals and 
magnifies the shining grain of gold in hard, 
rough trials or amid the desert sands of life. 



TEACHING A MAN HIS 
PLACE 



TEACHING A MAN HIS 
PLACE 



^ — 1 1 — ^HIS is a profession that is overcrowded 
and has the largest waiting list of 

ii perhaps any. It is strange why so 
many should be eager to enter upon it, 
because for two very convincing and satis- 
factory reasons it is one of the most unsuc- 
cessful businesses ever started. Clothing stores 
fail as often as may be necessary, if we may 
believe the bargain signs. Comic papers never 
leave us long without stories or pictures of 
stranded theatrical companies. But the busi- 
ness of teaching a man his place never is a 
complete success, and that of teaching a woman 
her place has a larger percentage of failures. 

The two reasons, however, are: the incom- 
petency of the teacher and the intractability 
of the pupil. The teacher is a failure as a 
teacher, and the pupil is a failure as a pupil. 
Such a school had better close its doors and 



16 



MUSTAKD SEED 



declare a perpetual vacation. Yet, strange to 
say, it is always opening its doors, always hold- 
ing its sessions, always giving lessons, impos- 
sible to be learned, to pupils who cannot 
learn. When a teacher who cannot teach 
meets a pupil who cannot be taught, the prob- 
lem resembles that of the body which nothing 
could stop meeting the body which nothing 
could move, and it deserves the famous an- 
swer: "Something's got to give." 

The teacher shows his incompetency at 
once by saying he is going to teach one thing 
when in reality he is teaching another. To 
state that one is going to teach another his 
place is like the phrases: "Not at home," "I 
don't remember," merely a way of stating the 
opposite to what one means. The teacher 
really means to say he going to teach another, 
not his, but the teacher's place. 

Again the teacher's methods, in addition to 
his message, are faulty and not based upon the 
psychological principles of the soundest peda- 
gogy. You want to show a man his place, that 
is to say, your place, and you wait to begin 
your teaching until you are excited and pretty 
nearly unable to talk or think coherently. 



TEACHING MAN HIS PLACE 17 



When people are cool, they are not so tremen- 
dously agitated over the geographical loca- 
tion and boundaries of themselves and others. 
Besides, how can you hope to teach another 
his place, which, strangely, yet naturally, 
never under any circumstances fails to be 
lower than yours, if, when you begin your show- 
ing, you take it for granted that you are on a 
mountain and he in a mine. He, on the con- 
trary, is firmly persuaded that you are in a 
hole and he on the Himalayas. He feels that 
your excitement and exaggeration in rele- 
gating him to the antipodes is so unfair that 
he in reaction begins to fit angels' wdngs to 
his shoulders for flights to the blue sky, leaving 
you w^here he feels you belong. At this point 
school breaks up. 

But do not be discouraged. Despite the 
innumerable failures you may yet master the 
difficult art of teaching others their place. 
Have you forgotten that wonderful lesson of 
at wonderful Teacher? There were once two 
ardent characters who liked to teach other 
people their places, and one of their methods 
was to call down lightning from heaven. It 
may have been then they were called Sons of 



18 



MUSTARD SEED 



Thunder. Thunder and Ughtning go together 
and have always been characteristic of such 
teachers. Their own place, as one might expect, 
was to be up in heaven sending down the light- 
ning. So, at least, their mother thought and 
applied for the position for the Sons of Thunder. 
As there were nearly ten other mothers and 
sons looking for the same place, there was at 
once an especially stormy session of the School 
for Teaching People their Places. 

The Master of masters taught them all their 
place. Don't make others feel small but be- 
come so yourself, was the gist of His lesson. 
''If any man desire to be first, so shall he be 
the last of all and servant of all. . . . Whoso- 
ever shall humble himself as this little child, 
he is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven." 



IT HAS SLAIN ITS TEN 
THOUSANDS 



IT HAS SLAIN ITS TEN 
THOUSANDS 



RONY is the well-dressed and compara- 
tively harmless brother of sarcasm. Irony 
smiles; sarcasm is sardonic. Irony may 
in its wildest moments wield a lancet or 
a rattan, medicinal, if menacing; the rough- 
handed brother is a bludgeon and a buzz-saw. 

Sometimes, indeed, sarcasm is a means of 
defence, but so, too, is a sting, a fang, a claw, 
or the snap of sharp teeth. Unhappily, be- 
hind these weapons there is an irresponsible 
agent, and that it is which makes them formi- 
dable. So is it with sarcasm. The man who 
takes a pride in the glitter and edge of the 
dagger he loves to whet, will be tempted to 
display its burnished brightness and experi- 
ment with its sharpness. Sarcasm forgets the 
woes of its victim, while it exults in its own 
keenness and brilliancy. It assumes a superi- 



22 



MUSTARD SEED 



ority which is maddening; and it will not only 
pierce its victim, but turn its weapon in the 
wound. Should it then be surprised if it roils 
the springs of human kindliness and draws to 
the turbid surface the refuse and mean sedi- 
ment which virtue keeps suppressed. There is 
something of the strong man beating a woman, 
or of an angry man kicking a horse in the un- 
governed sallies of sarcasm. The ocean 
travelers may admire the white spectre of an 
iceberg floating majestically on the waves; 
but it would be expecting too much disinter- 
estedness in mankind to think that the travelers 
will turn and bless this icy brilliance when their 
vessel has been dealt a mortal wound, and 
they are engulfed in the chilled waters. The 
cold, sharp edges of sarcasm number more 
victims than have gone down before the ice- 
bergs of the sea. 

Sarcasm has been the opening scene in many 
a domestic tragedy. A broken sleep, a dis- 
gruntled husband at breakfast, a nervous wife 
forgetting to put on the salt, the curled lip, 
unveiling a keen-edged tooth, the flash and bite 
of a sarcastic word — enough; the curtain 
falls in a divorce court. Do you hunger for 



HAS SLAIN ITS THOUSANDS 23 



human affection; do you await the pleasure of 
trusting confidence? Then avoid sarcasm. 
The heart will expand and mellow in sunshine; 
it will not bare itseK to a stiletto. A juggler 
whirling sharp knives cannot expect you to 
shake hands with him or, without fear of dire 
consequences to your nose, approach to kiss 
him. Imagine a man and wife or two sisters 
trying to embrace when both parties were keep- 
ing a dozen edged blades in the air. If you will 
be sarcastic, make up your mind to be a heart- 
hermit. The delicate bloom of confidence and 
loving trust will never grow on the red-hot 
coals of a furnace. 

The teacher, the superior, the wife, the hus- 
band, the older brother or sister, the human 
being who impales his victim on the cross of 
sarcasm and then shouts, Yah! at him, will be 
eventually forgiven, it is to be hoped, but the 
high degree of virtue required for such forgive- 
ness is not at present a drug on the market. To 
expect conversion of any kind from sarcasm, 
displays in the user exceptionally rare faith. 
Since the time Adam got sarcastic with Eve, 
or vice versa, sarcasm has made almost as 
many converts as there are moons to the earth 



24 MUSTARDSEED 

or suns in our planetary system or Christmases 
in one year. The sarcastic Herod did not 
deserve a word from Christ. Some Christian 
legends have canonized Pilate, but the devil's 
advocate had no trouble in excluding Herod 
from the roll of Saints. 



FUMING AND FRETTING 



FUMING AND FRETTING 

DID you ever see such"; ''Well, if 
that doesn't just"; ''Wouldn't 
that"; "Will you look at"; "Of 
all the most"; "Whatever in the world"; 
these are pet phrases reserved for the man 
who fumes and frets. These are his stock 
in trade, indexed in the dictionary of fuming 
and fretting, forming the contents of the Handy 
Fumer and Fretter, sold everywhere. These 
are the words to which are sung the discords 
of fretting, and which bear to the ears of suflfer- 
ing humanity the sad wail of fuming. In 
schools the teacher sometimes sets as an exer- 
cise an unfinished sentence for the pupils to 
complete. The school of fuming and fretting 
has few vacations, and filling out the above 
phrases is its daily exercise. 

Fume is tragic Tvdthout any particular 
grounds for fury and gloom. Fret is as light 
and frothy as comedy, but, alas, never smiles. 



28 



MUSTARD SEED 



Fume is masculine; fret is feminine, but there 
is no likelihood of matrimony. They will be- 
come respectively a crusty bachelor and a 
peppery shrew. They once began a court- 
ship, but Mr. Fume blistered Miss Fret's 
cheek and Miss Fret came very near snapping 
off Mr. Fume's nose. So the prospective 
imion was averted and no gifts were returned. 
None had been given. They were the original 
preventers of useless giving. 

Rub two pieces of sandpaper together. The 
heat is fume and the rasp is fret. Some 
dismal, wintry night, when it is sloppy under- 
foot and sleety overhead, and a raw wind is 
moaning, and every one is gloomy, you hear 
a long-drawn whine of the gale at your window 
and the frame rattles angrily. That is the 
time fuming and fretting find their way into 
man's soul. The fume is the howling whine, 
and the angry rattle is the fret. If Darwin 
is right, the cur represents the highest evolu- 
tion of fuming and fretting. These qualities 
are atrophied in saints and in the dead, but in 
curs they proved fittest to survive and give full 
aid in the struggle against pugnacious environ- 
ment. Behold these two functions highly ideal- 



FUMING AND FRETTING 29 

ized and perfectly developed in the ugly snarl 
and the vicious snap. 

Tell your neighbor who is fretting and fum- 
ing and mistaking his teapot for a typhoon 
generator, some of the wisdom of the ages. 
Tell him that ''Rome was not built in a day." 
Say, ''More haste less speed"; "One thing at 
a time"; "Make haste slowly." Alas, he has 
his answer ready, and he turns your wisdom 
back upon you and overwhelms you with 
excited and fiery exclamations about making 
hay and saving stitches and not putting off 
till to-morrow. Striking hot iron especially 
appeals to him. He likes a hammer and is 
delighted to get iron into such a state that he 
can beat it into any shape he chooses. 

Herod fumed and fretted, and then dis- 
patched an army to slaughter helpless babies. 
The Pharisees fretted and fumed until they, 
too, got murder into their hearts. Peter fumed 
and fretted himself, first into a fret of fervor, 
then into an unwatchful sleep, then into a dan- 
gerous occasion, then into curses and denials. 
Peter, however, stopped short of the treachery 
and murder found in other fuming and fret- 
ting, and with one look of his Lord the fumes 



30 



MUSTARD SEED 



went up in repentance and the fret fled before 
humility. 

When a man finds that every time he opens 
his eyeHds, something he sees propels a speck 
of dust into his sensitive eye, or when he feels 
the grit of sand in every particle of food, or 
detects a fly in every ointment whose fragrance 
assails his nose, when, in a word, every one 
else and everything else is wrong about him 
and pressure is high and hot boxes threaten 
all wheels, no doubt there is need of a doctor, 
but in all cases there is more need of Him Who 
came to earth to do the most tremendous work 
ever attempted, the sanctification of mankind, 
and then waited for thirty years quietly and 
calmly before He started. Your fumer and 
fretter would have been able to suggest im- 
provements to Omniscience and give assistance 
to Omnipotence. There were some who fumed 
and fretted and murmured against the Master 
of the House, but all their resentment and angry 
glances and galling burdens and sweating 
heats availed nothing. "They likewise re- 
ceived every man a penny." 



A UNIVERSAL GENIUS 



A UNIVERSAL GENIUS 




HIS introduces to you a versatile 
artist whose various accomplishments 
demand the powerul language of an 



adept press-agent for their adequate exploita- 
tion. Somewhere out of sight in every person 
is a strange being known as a habit. Habit 
is the greatest of all performers. No stage, 
no circus, no office could run an instant 
without habit. A man has ten fingers which 
are clumsy and awkward and act as though they 
were all one-jointed thumbs. Then comes 
habit and works its way into flesh and muscles 
and joints and nerves, and the leaden fingers 
fly over a typewriter and take on the speed and 
almost the very power of thought, or they follow 
master-minds on angel wings through the woven 
intricacies of the sublime harmony of music. 

If habit can wing what is slow, what w^ill it 
do to what is already swift Coupled with 
every human need is a human desire, ready to 



34 



MUSTARD SEED 



meet the need, eager to anticipate the need. 
These specialized desires are the passions of 
man. They are not like heavy feet which are 
to be made light by the habit of dancing, not 
like stiflf fingers to be made supple by habits 
of music or other arts, not even like the light- 
ning thoughts which are quite sluggish even 
when drilled by years of exercise into celerity 
of movement. But the passions, before habit 
comes, are aheady dextrous and agile and more 
speedy than light. Habit, then, is supreme 
when it fastens upon passion and focuses and 
intensifies and specializes what is already 
intense and concentrated. Habit raises self- 
ishness to a throne to which the whole man 
bows down in abject slavery. Habit pampers 
a desire till it becomes a possession. By it 
man is resolved into a sleeping, waking, walk- 
ing, speaking, thinking, dreaming thirst. He 
ceases to be a man; he becomes a corkscrew, 
a faucet, a vinous viaduct. 

Think of the tactics of this universal genius. 
Habit is a consummate general and outflanks 
duty, surprises and triumphantly routs hosts 
of scruples. Doctors and pharmacists may 
compound their drugs in all ways and means, 



A UNIVERSAL GENIUS 35 



they can never produce soporifics equal to those 
manufactured by habit. Habit clamors for 
perfect satisfaction, mental and moral as well 
as corporal. It is competent for the task and 
supplies to the soul an opiate to lull uneasy 
conscience to profound sleep. As a consulting 
physician, habit is unrivalled except that its 
bills for filling prescriptions are pretty high. 
Habit prescribes a smoke as an awakener and 
also as an inducer of somnolence. A smoke 
used to be an excellent appetizer and an in- 
dispensable digester, and now by advice of the 
specialist, habit, it accompanies all the courses 
of a meal. Between the acts will be abolished 
soon, in favor of a continuous performance. 
The cigarette will be the constant companion 
of the lorgnette. 

Luckily our writers have not the powers of 
fiction possessed by habit, or we should be 
swamped in the deluge of "best-sellers." What 
unrivalled stories habit tells to its pet passion! 
What colors on its palette! Whsii visions 
start into life under its brush! Demosthenes 
resorted to desperate measures, living in caves, 
torturing his body, roaring at the ocean, filling 
his mouth with pebbles, and all for what.^ To 



36 



MUSTARD SEED 



win some powers of persuasion? Could he 
have gone to school to habit, he would have 
become the most persuasive of orators. He 
could argue a man into any kind of sickness 
or pain, which would demand instant and 
frequent internal applications of alcohol, and 
then argue all the trouble away again. This 
he could do as often as he wished. His audi- 
ences would have no prejudices to overcome; 
they never would be sleepy or tired; they would 
literally drink in his arguments and never be 
sated with the flow of his eloquence. 

Where does habit get its marvelous powers.^ 
It is likely that flesh is able to perform all these 
wonders, unaided or coached by the example 
of the world, but it is more likely that the third 
of an unhallowed trio is an active abettor of 
habit. In fact the Good Book tells us that the 
soul can be swept and garnished and yet the 
evil spirit will come back with new recruits. 
Bad habit has the help of the whole seven more 
wicked spirits, and that accounts for some of 
its accomplishments. 



NAGGING 



NAGGING 



SHE had, if I remember rightly, three 
small children whom she drove before 
her down the aisle of the raihoad car 
to two empty seats near me. Her husband 
came after her and had with him many 
heavy evidences of a day's shopping in 
the city. Bundles, ^Taps and coats were laid 
aside, and all went well. Presently the brake- 
man announced a station, and the wife, who 
had asked the same question at every other 
announcement, again inquired of her husband, 
"Is this our station?" The poor fellow had 
the look of one who was haunted or hunted, or 
both, and with fatal precipitation, he said, 
"No!" He was wrong; it was their station, 
and when the station was shouted a second 
time though the car, the wife cast a look at 
her husband which might have broken the 
window-pane if it had missed him. "I asked 
you,*" she began, "and you told me it wasn't." 



40 MUSTARDSEED 

She repeated the same words again and again, 
now in his direction, now at the children, 
whom she was hurriedly pushing into their 
coats, then back at him: then at the bundles, 
which she caught up in awkward haste. The 
last I saw of them, he was trying to placate 
her, and she was making one answer to every 
argument and every motion: ''But I asked you, 
didn't I? And you told me it wasn't!" 

All this happened several years ago, but I 
have a presentiment that the tune, at whose 
birth I was sponsor, is still being sung. To 
tell the truth, she had my fullest sympathy, 
but now that the poor husband has heard that 
same tune to the same words and with the same 
intonation persistently chanted at him from 
that time to this, I feel for him. He deserved 
to be electrocuted, but he did not deserve to 
be tortured for life. She was a nagger. 

A nagger is a person who has learnt one tune 
and then lost all ear for music. A nagger is a 
self-winding, single-record Victrola. Naggers 
are more like machines than like anything else; 
but if a parallel is desired in living things, any 
summer night by the sea, with the breeze off 
shore and no mosquito bars, will let loose upon 



NAGGING 



41 



a sleeper a hundred insects of one tune and 
reiterant persistency. 

People who nag have narrow horizons. If 
they lived on mountains their mole-hills would 
shrink to their proper dimensions. But they 
live in the same round of the same duties, and 
their minds, memories, hopes are always 
thrown in upon themselves. Like whirlpools, 
with every revolution they travel a narrower 
circle until the destructive currents sweep their 
victims to despair, drowning and death. The 
woman in the home, the teacher in the class- 
room, the small boy in a small office, the marti- 
net in a new position, the baby with a toy 
drum, these furnish the world's supply of 
nagging. It may be asserted without fear of 
denial that this sad life could subsist on less 
of the supply. We wish nagging were as rare 
as radium; it is almost as deadly in its unceas- 
ing emanations. 

An exception, perhaps, to the usual prereq- 
uisite of a narrow horizon may be found in 
newspaper nagging. As a rule, the standard 
of humor is so high in journalists that they do 
not fall into this dolorous, complaining rut. 
Yet newspapers may have fixed ideas as well 



42 



MUSTARD SEED 



as individuals, and sometimes get — and de- 
serve — the reputation of a common scold by 
persistently hounding one man. Education, 
travel, reading, humor, if possible, are some 
of the cures for nagging: the best of all is 
purgatory. 



THEY ALSO RAN 



THEY ALSO RAN 



™^HERE is a sad class of people who de- 
serve the sympathy of all men. It 
is made up of those who do not 
think of a thing first. They are just about 
to discover a new idea, propose a brilliant plan 
at a club-meeting, inaugurate a new scheme 
of public reform, when along comes some one 
else who takes the words out of their mouths, 
so to say, or even roots the idea out of their 
heads, just as it was about to flower. A young 
lad was receiving his first lesson in grammar. 
''You must not say," he was told, 'me and 
Jim was there,' say 'Jim and I were there.' " 
"Oh," replied the boy sadly, "I don't like to 
be next." Who could have seen in "me and 
Jim" an illustration of early ambitions? Who 
does not see in the words a striking instance of 
the sadness of those whose doom it is always to 
be next? 

If you are of that unhappy class, what do 
you intend to do? If a fellow-doctor antici- 



46 



MUSTARD SEED 



pates you by a great discovery which you were 
on the point of making, will you assume an 
air of superior and severely professional 
cautiousness, reach for your glasses and micro- 
scope and get down into the very atoms of 
the article or address to see if there is not an 
ion missing, or will you gulp down the chagrin 
of being next and give the discovery an enthu- 
siastic reception? If you do not get to the 
patent-office first, you may at least have the 
honor of proposing the first cheer. If not 
Columbus, you may be Isabella, and give your 
more agile companion jewels, not chains. 

The competition in initiative is becoming 
more strenuous every day. Newspapers in 
their feverish endeavor not to be next, have 
resorted to wonderful devices. The "scoop" 
and the "beat" are their ideals of successful 
journalists. They have buried a Pope and 
given his dying words years before his death. 
They have printed the opening speech of the 
prosecution before the jury was chosen. Un- 
happily the Pope can not fine for contempt of 
the papacy, otherwise Peter's Pence would 
have a substantial increase. The State and 
national legislatures furnish the admiring world 



THEY ALSO RAN 



47 



with many exhibitions of uncommon bursts 
of speed on the part of rival reformers to get 
their legislation first before the House. Per- 
haps that strangest and most pitiable of all 
human frailties, the so-called odium theologi- 
cum, has partially its origin in disappointment 
at not being the first to have invented a new 
theory for solving the mysteries of some moral 
or dogmatic truth. When one thinks of the 
amenities displayed in discussing God's most 
gracious gifts to earth, he blushes for the 
weakness of men w^ho forget charity, politeness 
and even decency rather than admit that 
others have thought of it first. From the 
committee in charge of one section of a church 
picnic up to the congregation of an ecumenical 
council you will find disappointed second- 
place men, and annoyingly triumphant indi- 
viduals who thought of it first. 

The teacher who has an inventive pupil, the 
employer who has an employee with initiative, 
the superior who is waited on by a subordinate 
with a new idea, all these may snub the un- 
happy persons that have anticipated them, 
or they may rise above the prevalent weakness 
of mankind. They may even model them- 



48 



MUSTARD SEED 



selves, in their dealings with others, upon those 
magnificent duellists of humble love: the one 
telling disappointed followers, "He must in- 
crease but I must decrease"; the other sub- 
mitting himself to be baptized: "Suffer it to 
be so now. For so it becometh us to fulfil all 
justice." These spiritual giants were great 
enough to be willing to do what was right. 
The place where they did it, first or second or 
last, was immaterial. 



SEEING OURSELVES 



SEEING OURSELVES 




NE of the few recorded prayers of 
a famous Scotch poet was to the 
effect that it would be a good thing 



to see ourselves as others see us. He, how- 
ever, admitted that the results would not be 
conducive to devotion. Many another good 
thing, too, besides devotion, would go with 
this true reflection of ourself; self-satisfaction, 
glowdng autobiographies, comforting assur- 
ances from consciousness, laudatory interviews 
with one's own recollections, patience and much 
unfounded contentment. *'Why do you bring 
suit for libel two years after you were called a 
hippopotamus?" asked the judge. '*\Yell, 
your honor," replied the plaintiff, ''it was only 
yesterday that for the first time I saw the ani- 
mal." The number of suits for libel against 
self -revelation would certainly crowd the docket 
if seeing ourseves as others see us came to be 
the fashion. 



52 



MUSTARD SEED 



There are immense difficulties to producing 
in a man this true reflection of himself. How 
many editors have succeeded in making their 
rejected contributors see themselves as they 
have been seen? We pause for a reply, but as 
eternity is long, let us ask rather whether it is 
the mirror or my lady's eyes which are respon- 
sible for what parades the avenues. Here is 
a tale which gives one reason why self-igno- 
rance has so long a life: There was once a lad 
who must have derived his ideas of man's 
anatomy from an onion. At any rate, he 
beHeved that every one grew up by building 
around himself another layer. If you peeled 
off the man, you could find, he thought, the 
boy. In certain cases there would be numer- 
ous layers, and the labor would be immense, 
for example, to get from an ex-president to a 
baby. But apply that notion to self and try 
to peel off the layers built up around the true 
knowledge of what you are. Take a cross 
section of your soul, and you would have to 
cut through successes, dreams, ideals, flat- 
teries, congratulations, dotings of fond par- 
ents, ambitions, deceptions, various hand- 
shakings and shoulder-clappings of friends, 



SEEING OURSELVES 



53 



until you finally reached the shrunken and 
wrinkled kernel of self. No wonder the 
Greeks admired the man who said, Know 
thyself! and considered him one of the seven 
wise men of the world. 

There was a certain Spanish soldier who 
had hidden himself behind a life of distrac- 
tions, of loves, hates, gamblings, dissipations, 
day-dreamings, novel-reading, quarreling, 
soldiering. He broke down all those in- 
trenchments and got to a knowledge of 
seH, but it was a heroic struggle. The pro- 
cess started with a cannon-ball, and a surgi- 
cal operation, and a long sickness, and the 
process ended by his giving up home and 
wealth and honors, by fasting and medita- 
tion on Christ's life and by many months of 
retirement alone in a cave. He wrote a 
book in which he formulated the science of 
seeing yourself as God sees you, which is 
an improvement on the Scotch formula. The 
Spaniard was Ignatius of Loyola; his recipe 
for self-knowledge is called a retreat. In 
those exercises he does not seem to have 
left out much of his own experience except 
the cannon-ball. He would likely use that 



54 



MUSTARD SEED 



in extreme cases. Surgery, however, and 
prayer and fasting and exile and silence and 
caves of solitude are used to cut away self- 
deceptions. Besides this external surgery, 
as it might be called, there is an immense 
amount of internal surgery also, but we can 
not go into that here. 

Retreats will not be popular until people 
cease to be afraid of hippopotamuses. There 
was a short retreat given once upon a time. 
The supreme excellence of the Director dis- 
pensed with long explanations. His exer- 
citants saw themselves as God saw them, 
and they dropped their stones and went out 
one after another, beginning with the oldest. 
Self-seeing is a potent discourager of stone- 
throwing. 



WHAT DO THEY SAY? 



WHAT DO THEY SAY? 




HE easiest way to make public opin- 
ion is to change say" into '*they 
say." This might be called the 



reporter's '*they" to correspond with the 
editor's **we." Many a weak cause has 
been shored up by this singular use of a 
plural pronoun. Many a bit of gossip has 
had a long lease of life, supported by the 
mysterious and formidable multitude which 
"they" constitutes. The story for which 
say" stands sponsor, dies in early in- 
fancy. 

Yet there are cases where the single as- 
sertion of a single individual assumes almost 
the dimensions of national belief. It is a 
fact, amply proved by daily experience, that 
if a man persistently asserts something and 
spreads his statement broadcast by means 
of the press, his views will enter into the 



58 



MUSTARD SEED 



body of contemporary thought and pass 
current as public opinion. P. T. Barnum 
seems to have been the discoverer of the 
psychological fact that people will take you 
at your own valuation if you give frequent 
expression to it. It would take a great deal 
of hardihood for the ordinary individual to 
deny that Barnum's was "the greatest show 
on earth." People feel that what is repeat- 
edly put down in cold print can not possibly 
be untrue. 

When the mail-carrier hears '*they say" 
from the last house on his rural route, a 
house a mile from the main road, he will 
not find it hard to compute the number in 
**they." Arriving at town, he may add 
himself and a few at the post-office, and 
some at home and at the bar, until what 
"they say" spreads out in very wide circles 
from the dropping of a very little pebble. 
Then the local reporter gets the story, and 
the largest circulation in the county makes 
its thousand readers close their eyes and 
open wide their hungry minds and gulp down 
what their oracle of truth has proclaimed. 
So public opinion is formed. 



WHAT DO THEY SAY? 59 

This is the bogey which frightens so many 
into chills and fevers. *'They say" has few 
terrors for a man whose travels mean more 
than going to toT\Ti on market-day, and fewer 
terrors still for that intellectual traveler w^hose 
mind is conversant with the views and opinions 
of the world of letters. Those who know 
geography and history are not likely to identify 
R. D, 365 \\dth the globe or Farmer Tassel 
with the human race. They are not hke the 
irresponsible members of an impulsive mob 
which spontaneously re-echoes one voice by a 
thousand cheers, and discharges itself upon 
its victim, like a park of artillery, to the touch 
of one button. **They say" will not scare 
away any one who is acquainted with some 
millions who do not say. 

A convert to Catholicity was very much 
worried about the views she heard expressed 
concerning her newly-adopted Church. She 
tried to alarm her servant, but that lifelong 
Catholic replied very calmly: "Sure, ma'am, 
the Church can stand it." What was the 
clamor of some contemporaries, however many, 
although they were more loud than numerous, 
what was their ''say" to one who felt her 



60 



MUSTARD SEED 



Catholicity, who touched elbows with 250,- 
000,000 side by side with her and looked back 
to crowded ranks 2000 years deep, marked 
with the sign of salvation. What do they 
say? 



FASTER, FASTER! 



FASTER, FASTER! 



TEP LIVELY! The trains of life are 
now running under one-second head- 
way. The world does seem slow. To 
the young ladies who are to come out next 
year or graduate from school, the world 
appears to creep around the sun like a snail, 
but in order to satisfy the eagerness of the 
young hearts that poor old earth is traveling 
about 70,000 miles an hour to get to next 
year. Suppose a man were riding on a loco- 
motive, going at the rate of two hundred miles 
an hour and were to step off in front of it. 
Before you begin to count the pieces think of 
this: the solid earth besides whirling around 
the sun with the speed just mentioned, spins 
around at the same time like a top in a very 
lively fashion. Now, imagine you stepped off 
the world and got in its way. The locomotive 
that would collide with you weighs six sex- 
tillion tons. (A sextillion is a figure with 




64 



MUSTARD SEED 



twenty-one ciphers after it.) You would be 
pounded to fragments by mountains and 
combed fine by miles of forests and filtered 
into specks of dust by huge seas. Don't be 
frightened. You cannot step off the earth. 
But if you did, in one hour one thousand miles 
of this earth would have swept at you like a 
mammoth brush on whose tremendous bristles 
you would be danced. At eight o'clock, San 
Francisco would hit you; at nine Denver would 
collide with what was left; at ten Chicago 
would appropriately mince the particles; at 
eleven an atom or two of your precious per- 
sonality would strike a New York sky-scraper. 
The time and place are approximate. Con- 
clusion: the world is getting ahead, but don't 
get ahead of it! 

Alas, even in your surviving atoms there is 
no rest. Within that narrow sphere ions and 
electrons are whirling and spinning with 
extraordinary rapidity. We rely upon Sir 
Ernest Rutherford and other eminent travelers 
in that scientific Lilliputia for those facts. 
We ourselves have never seen an ion go round. 
All things considered, however, the subway 
guard should be satisfied. The universe is 



FASTER, faster! 65 

stepping lively. But speed conditions are not 
yet satisfactory. Speed has become a virtue 
desirable in itself. The destination is im- 
material; the celerity is everything. Meals 
used to be a time of rest and talk, now they 
are taken with rush and tango. If you are 
discovered enjoying leisure, you are hkely to 
be interviewed by the investigator of some 
financial foundation, as a possible victim of 
hook-worms, ''That is not ease; that is a 
disease. You must keep up mth the earth 
and the atom. Step lively!" 

If you are elected to oflBce, call a special 
session, put a time limit on talk, grease the 
legislative ways, launch a thousand laws with 
great hurrah, tour the country in an express 
train, with one-minute speeches at small 
settlements, five-minute harangues at towns, 
half-hour orations at cities, hire an automobile 
for the rural routes, and board an aeroplane 
for mountain resorts. The real reason, no 
doubt, why people are dissatisfied with our 
judges is that they are the only ones who 
move slow. They think. Why tolerate such 
a loss of time, when you can arrest, try, 
convict, condemn, and execute anybody at 



66 



MUSTARD SEED 



once by acclamation and a gun? Ropes are 
too slow, and kerosene is good for getting 
rid of rubbish. 

School means leisure in Greece; it means 
speed in America. Why should the valuable 
time of the nursery be lost.^ Hitting baby- 
brother with a rattle could be made a lesson 
in the mechanics of projectiles, and in the 
velocity of falling bodies. The attempt to 
swallow its big toe may be the first stirring of 
curiosity in ambitious youth. Satisfy that 
desire by a full course in sex hygiene. Why 
should infant phenomena be scarce and rare 
and found in one city alone It was a medie- 
val idea that it took time to mature and 
ripen. You tell me that a man can bake an 
apple in a few minutes, but can not ripen it 
in a few months. Nonsense, Mr. Burbank 
will soon provide us with early roast-apple 
trees. 

What? "Time is needed for growth?" 
"The universe was not ready-made, but was 
gradually formed." "Rome was not built 
in twenty-four hours." "The world was 
not dragooned into Christianity, but slow was 
the growth of Christian Rome, too." "First 



FASTER, faster! 67 

the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full 
wheat in the ear." Very true, sir, but you 
are now talking of things eternal, not of 
things earthly and diurnal. Here we are 
subway travelers and must step lively. 



CHAFFING 



CHAFFING 




HERE was an ancient mariner who 
lived before the days scientific 
aHenists began to answer long 



questions, and for that reason, among 
others, he was allowed to wander at large, 
to fix his glittering eye on his fellowman 
rather than on bars and blank walls, and to 
tell to fascinated hearers his one story, not 
simply to babble it to himself. There is, 
too, a modern mariner who resembles his 
ancient brother in having one story. Other 
resemblances may be left to the proper au- 
thorities. One lack of resemblance there is. 
The ancient mariner told his one story and 
sought another victim; the modern mariner 
has one story and one perpetual victim. The 
species we are attempting to classify is the 
chaffer. 

The chaffer's haunts are the dinner-table, 
the boarding-house, the school-yard on a dull 



72 



MUSTARD SEED 



day, the smoking room of the club, and other 
customary gathering places. When things 
are particularly dull, when people are tired of 
using their minds or have none to use, when 
conversation is slack, when there are no 
rumors in the air, no scandals, no reported 
wars, when the tide of intellectual life has 
reached the lowest ebb, down to wide stretches 
of unfragrant ooze, then the chaffer begins to 
prowl and the chaff begins to fly, and the 
chaffed begins to wince. Where is the 
chaffer's favorite hunting groimd? It is 
found associated with some meek, inoffensive 
individual, whose powers of suffering are as 
long as a light year. Having chosen his 
victim and ascertained that he will not snap 
back, the chaffer brings out his well-threshed 
chaff, which will be some physical peculiarity 
of his meek prey, the place of his birth or 
residence, some happening of his past life, 
some quality, deficiency, or what not. 

The listeners have heard it all before, but 
they must resurrect the same old smile, 
galvanize it into a new lease of life, spread 
it wearily over tired muscles and hold it 
charitably there while the chaffer goes on. 



CHAFFING 



73 



There are usually at hand one or two other 
sounding boxes who re-echo the noise of the 
chief chaffer. The victim? He is the dull 
stone upon which they sharpen old and blunt 
witticisms. He may be out of sorts and more 
than usually sensitive; he cannot complain. 
It is his vocation to fill intellectual vacuums. 
He must be ground down to make a road on 
which the chaffer may ride his hobby with 
comfort. 

If there was only a little change, if the 
modern mariners would vary their story while 
keeping the same victim, why it would not 
be so bad. There was once a target for the 
chaffer's shafts, and for nearly fifteen years 
he felt himself pierced in the same identical 
spot. The spot, as might be conjectured, 
became somewhat tender. To the surprise 
of everybody, one day the target emitted 
a prolonged and deliberate howl. The par- 
ticipants had imagined that it was a fifteen 
years' picnic to be shot on the same spot. 
At all events, that particular archery practice 
was discontinued rather hurriedly, and the 
club has not met since. 

It is our belief that a special mansion in 

i 
i 



74 



MUSTARD SEED 



heaven is reserved for these victims of the 
modern gladiator, whereas the torturer and 
his grinning audience which wags its thumbs 
in approval of the torture, have reserved for 
them, we hope, at least, — a death-bed re- 
pentance. Let us leave them to the patron 
saint of the chaffed, that good, old prophet 
we read of many years ago, who was being 
chaffed by a crowd of small boys, and saw 
his tormenters devoured by wild bears. 

''But wait," you say, "hasn't chaffing a 
curative value Yes, some, but the treat- 
ment is kept up too long, the fees are exor- 
bitant. People sometimes prefer to die rather 
than to diet. ''Ha," you reply, "I believe 
you have been chaffed yourself!" Never 
mind about that, but isn't it too bad that 
bears are so scarce? 



TOO PROUD TO BE VAIN 



TOO PROUD TO BE VAIN 




ANITY loves to bask in the reflected 
glory of a mirror; pride has no 
need of such foolishness. It has 



for some time been aware of its own 
undimmed and undiminishable charms. Van- 
ity is sixteen years of age; pride about 
thirty-five, old enough to have seen the silli- 
ness of vanity, not old enough to have ex- 
perienced the silliness of self. These are ages 
of character, not of flesh and bone, and must 
be calculated by the records of common sense, 
not by the entries in the family Bible. If 
you cannot find the latter book, ask the 
grown-up daughters what has become of 
the birth-register. Vanity will know, because 
age is one of the points to which vanity is 
sensitive. 

But let us proceed with the toilet. Vanity 
puts on bright ribbons, but pride considers 
all that superfluous. Pride is engaged in 



78 



MUSTARD SEED 



disrobing others of their excellences, while 
vanity rushes into the latest Parisian horror. 
Not so, pride. Pride puts on a very severe 
gown, wears a very severe expression, adopts 
a very severe tone and preaches to a very 
severe gathering the total abolition of the 
male trust. The peacock vanity is preening 
its feathers, and radiating its rainbow splen- 
dors, while the owl pride, living in the ob- 
scurity of its own enlightenment, is blinking 
at the bright world about. 

When they go out on the street, butterfly 
vanity wanders, and pride, the hawk, takes a 
straight course with high-raised head. Vanity 
sees everything and expects to be seen by 
everybody. Pride has eyes for one person 
alone, and wholly immersed in that self- 
satisfying contemplation, is oblivious to all 
else except occasionally when it condescends 
to brush aside impertinent trespassers upon 
its sacred studies. Vanity trips along, light, 
superficial creature, a brook of shallow, dan- 
cing water, always about to dash over its 
banks. Pride is gloomy and heavy, a dark 
pool of unknown depths, harboring creatures 
of the night. 



TOO PROUD TO BE VAIN 79 

When these distant relatives get into 
church, vanity starts for the front pew, and 
is glad to be late. It is deHghted to be the 
drum-major in every procession, even if it 
must be drum-major at the end. Pride takes 
a rear seat where it can review the parade of 
*'the rest of men." There pride severely 
condemns the giddiness of vanity, which is 
gazing about in all directions, only occa- 
sionally allowing its eyes to rest on the altar. 
Pride's eyes rarely stray aside, but pride's 
thoughts cannot afford any leisure for prayer. 
By the time pride has succeeded in measuring 
out the proper amount of mental condemna- 
tion due to the congregation, the sermon is 
beginning, and then the principal work for 
pride begins. Vanity does not hear the 
sermon; pride condemns it. If vanity would 
only stop long enough from comparing hat- 
fashions, or altar-fashions, or surplice-fashions, 
it would admit that it was a sinner. Pride is 
unlike the rest of mortals; it cannot sin. It 
has its own Mount Sinai and deals out at its 
own discretion laws and exemptions to itself. 
Making a rough guess on a subject, upon 
which guessing is alone possible, we may say 



80 



MUSTARD SEED 



that vanity will perhaps get to Purgatory; 
pride will certainly — not arrive at Heaven. 

Vanity therefore is a weakness; pride is a 
disease. Great men and good men have 
been vain of their abiUties and their achieve- 
ments. Great and good women have been 
vain too. Vanity was ridiculous in the man, 
but was easily forgiven in the woman. With 
pride the case is different. A proud man is 
feared; a proud woman is distinctly un- 
pleasant. 



THE FACT OF THE 
MATTER IS 



THE FACT OF THE 
MATTER IS 



Tr^IRST SCENE: Enter an ardent em- 
H bodiment of enthusiasm, between eigh- 
) I teen and twenty years of age, the eyes 
aflame with a new idea. The voice thrills 
with an exultant note. A star has just 
floated within enthusiastic ken. The -^dngs 
are poised for a glorious flight. The pulses 
of life beat rapturously, and their joyous 
tingling is felt even to the uttermost tips of 
restless, eager pinions. 

Second Scene: Enter with a pronounced 
lowering of the temperature, A. Frost. His 
eyes are as mellow as an arc-light in winter, 
and his lips cut his words as though he was 
using a pair of plumber's shears for articula- 
tion. '*The fact of the matter is," he avers 
pointedly and precisely, ''there is no such 
star. That is a miasmic exhalation of sub- 
merged vegetation!" 



84 MUSTARD SEED 



Last Scene: Exit enthusiasm shivering 
from a discharge of cold water. The feathers 
are soaked and bedraggled; the wings are 
water-logged. Another eagle has been trans- 
formed into a hen for life, and the chiller of 
enthusiasm rubs his icy hands together 
gleefully. 

If you would realize what the scientists 
mean by absolute zero, begin to praise some 
one in the presence of the matter-of-fact man. 
Incipient panegyrics, next to youthful en- 
thusiasm, are his favorite prey. He will at 
once freeze into rigidity and become exceed- 
ingly cautious of all statements. Alleged 
events must be carefully scrutinized. "There 
were dozens," you say. "The fact of the 
matter is," you will be told, with ponderous 
gravity and crushing self-sufficiency, "there 
were only eleven, no more, no less." You 
feel your attempted praise is shrinking away, 
and you may felicitate yourself if, of all your 
wealth of congratulation, you have left what 
would constitute the Sunday contribution of 
a good Christian to his beloved pastor. 
History, science, logic and other things will 
suffer irretrievable ruin if any one should be 



FACT OF THE MATTER IS S5 

praised without the necessary hraitations im- 
posed by "matters of fact.'* 

Enthusiasm makes this matter-of-fact man 
scornful; panegyric makes him indignant; 
sentiment infuriates him. "Can you weigh 
sentiment, or smell it, or put it in a test-tube, 
or throw it on a screen by the help of the 
most powerful, enlarging microscope.^" "Sen- 
timent," he sniffs; "sentiment!" Perhaps 
you will mention poetry. "Fiddlesticks!" 
Or wild flowers. "Bugs and hay-fever!" Or 
sunsets. "Fogs and rheumatism!" "Now 
sir, tell me, sir, what do you consider, sir, a 
good instance of useful sentiment for a practi- 
cal man.'^" "A mother's heart," you reply, 
and that thaws off some of the chill for a 
time, at least. 

This foe of the human heart, this natural 
enemy of sentiment and praise and enthusi- 
asm, has had some interesting, if not noble, 
prototypes in the history of the world. There 
was once a very enthusiastic gathering where 
a father's heart overflowed in gushes of 
happiness. "This, my son," he cried, "was 
dead and has come to life again." "As a 
matter of fact, sir," he heard with a hissing 



86 



MUSTARD SEED 



at his ear, ''I do not recall that I ran through 
my money in the city. I do not at this 
moment remember any cabaret music, or 
roast veal for me at a banquet." There was 
also another banquet at which the chiller of 
enthusiasm was present. "She hath wrought 
a good work," said the ardent encourager of 
enthusiasm. '*The fact of the matter is," 
said the chiller; *'this ointment could be sold 
for three hundred pence." Are they who rob 
human hearts of enthusiasm and sentiment 
bearers, too, of a purse? Are they misers of 
the coin of praise, murmuring when it goes to 
others? 



BETTERING BAD BARGAINS 



BETTERING BAD BARGAINS 

YOU are just looking over the purchase 
you have made at the bargain counter 
of hfe. It does not fit. The econ- 
omy of modern raiment may preclude any 
cutting down for smaller members of the 
family. You are in despair. But why harden 
your heart with stoicism, when you might 
soften it with Christianity and so take up a 
better attitude toward the bargains of Hfe.^ 
Divine Providence has not yet shown any 
inclination to anticipate heaven on this earth. 
All earthly bargains have some defects in 
them. There is no dairy without its spilt 
milk. The pessimist will enlarge the deluge 
by tears; the optimist will reflect that milk 
irrigates the grass or washes the floor and 
start in to fill another pail. Not long since in 
New Jersey a fire broke out. There was no 
water at hand and a milk-car was pressed 
into service successfully. That is the triumph 



90 



MUSTARD SEED 



of failure when spilt milk becomes a fire 
extinguisher. 

Nobody ever knew how many bargains 
were bad until the divorce courts opened 
their doors. Women are said to be experts at 
bargaining and at marrying. Then how are 
we to account for the number of packages 
marked: return," ''unsuitable/' in the 
matrimonial market.^ Before the days of 
divorce people made the best of what they 
had. They did not begin to add up defects 
the very moment lace and orange-blossoms 
were laid aside for gingham and spinach. 
They kept their eyes riveted on the good 
points of their bargain until they got used to 
the bad ones. If the cloth was poor, the cut 
was good; if the sewing was botched, the 
buttons were lovely. When man and wife 
compared bargains, they saw that defects 
were balanced. If the shoe pinches, the last 
above is not always guilty, the foot may be 
at fault through size or sensitiveness. A 
shoemaker may be needed or a chiropodist, — 
or a little patience. Matrimony is heaven in 
the days of courtship, but after marriage it 
becomes a means of winning a higher place in 



BETTERING BAD BARGAINS 91 



heaven. The man or woman who can not 
make the best of what they have, until death 
do them part, are too particular to be inhab- 
itants of this earth. 

If you have a weless outfit, you can pick 
out of the air cries of distress from foundering 
vessels. Now some men make of themselves 
highly sensitized receivers of S. O. S. from 
every shipwreck of mankind: past, present or 
future. They have picked up all the sighs 
and sobs of history until life seems a funeral 
where everybody is a pall-bearer just one day 
before he occupies the hearse himself. These 
monopolists of woe will not let any tear dry 
but make it trickle into the Dead Sea of 
human sorrows. Every pain is recorded until 
mankind seems a festering wound and the 
earth a huge hospital. This is a useless, 
monotonous and decidedly lugubrious occupa- 
tion. The only earth these people will ever 
have is the one they are now on. Why not 
make the best of it.^ Besides this work of 
making a census of sadness is being done 
accurately and fully without a lost tear, 
without a missed pain, without the unheard 
whisper of a single sigh. By whom? By 



92 



MUSTARD SEED 



God's justice. That has fathomed the Dead 
Sea and knows its bitterness will be made 
sweet. That has proved the wounds of man- 
kind and is sure of their ultimate healing. 
So then, Wireless Operators of woe, tune your 
instruments to laughter and sunshine, and 
let the justice of God worry about glumness 
and gloom. 

Why, some are such adepts in making the 
best of a bad bargain that they exult over its 
very defects. They find a music in a sigh, 
rainbows in tears and pleasure in pain. They 
have very good precedent for this way of 
thinking, and they are acting upon excellent 
authority. Who was it that found mourning 
blessed and hunger blessed and persecution 
and reviling blessed.'^ It was He Who at the 
mart of men made the worst possible purchase 
and yet turned it into the best. Who from 
death and disgrace made life and glory. 



THE MITES AND THE 
MIGHTY 



THE MITES AND THE 
MIGHTY 

^ — 1 1 — ^HE chemist will show you a pair of 
scales which will weigh your name. 
11 Balance the delicate scale-pans, put- 
ting a piece of paper on each. Remove 
one paper and write your name on it with 
lead pencil. Replace the paper, and this 
most exact machine will tell you the weight 
of lead used to write your name. Yet science 
deals with still finer subjects. Some years 
ago the lightest thing in existence, outside 
of the soul, which has no weight, was a 
hydrogen atom, nearly fifteen times lighter 
than air, and hundreds of times lighter than 
metal. Now the latest scientists tell you 
that an ion, which is a constituent element 
of the atom, is about two thousand times 
lighter than the hydrogen atom. To be 
exact, they say eighteen hundred, but no one 
will believe that we are trifling with the truth 



96 



MUSTARD SEED 



if we enlarge some in dealing with such fine 
points as these. 

Pretty small things in the scientific world! 
Very small, but gigantic when compared with 
spiritual smallness: with the microscopic 
eye which can detect a mote in another a 
mile away; with the meticulous mind which 
will send to a department store to find out 
what a present cost and will ignore the weight 
of love accompanying it; with the infinitesi- 
mal logic which can conclude to a vice from 
a virtue and assert that she must be bad 
when every one says she is good; with the 
parasitic and microbic soul which can nurse 
and ripen the minute germs of a moral 
plague and inoculate a neighborhood with 
the venom of jealousy and hate. 

The time in which we live prides itself 
on its colossal accomplishments. It has 
climbed the highest mountains, but it has 
broken spinal columns in a foot-ball scrim- 
mage; is it so generous in giving presents 
that men and women must organize to re- 
strain themselves, but it will put poisoned 
pens to anonymous letters, and mail foul 
papers to Catholic neighbors; it has dis- 



MITES AND THE MIGHTY 97 



covered both poles of the earth, but it has 
seen its largest circulators hire perjured 
degenerates to vilify honesty and become 
receivers of stolen correspondence or patchers 
of torn mail for blackmail; it has witnessed 
waves of social uplift in politics and poverty, 
but it has armed the private detective w^ith 
decoys, kodaks, and dictographs and has 
unveiled the unspeakable vileness of the 
divorce court. The age is big in protest and 
promise and professions, and it is exceedingly 
big in mighty mean meanness. 

This catalog could be extended for any one 
who needs further conviction that souls are 
small to-day and do very small things. The 
age of chivalry has indeed passed. Yes, 
even the age of bandits and brigands has 
passed. Bad as they were, they had a large- 
ness of soul which would not permit them 
to rob widows and orphans. We now live 
in a time that eavesdroppers, pick-pockets, 
peepers, letter-openers, garbage-gatherers, 
command high prices and find ready market 
for their wares. 

The Pharisees received a severe scourging 
for their littleness of soul. Yet, let it be 



98 



MUSTARD SEED 



said to their credit, they were minute on 
religious formalities. It is large to be exact 
with God, and they in many cases honestly 
thought they were serving God's interests 
by straining at a gnat. But the Pharisees 
never had their soul so shrunken, so dwarfed, 
as to burn down a house in Bethlehem be- 
cause they were not permitted to hold a meet- 
ing in Jerusalem, or destroy the letters of an 
unknown Judean because some Galilean did 
not do what they wanted, or ruin a picnic 
ground where all went for pleasure simply 
because they did not have their own way in 
something else. Such petty acts of unmiti- 
gated meanness are the discoveries of our 
broad and enlightened age. The Providence 
that can detect and number the hairs of the 
head when they fall, will have to enlarge its 
magnifying powers to iBnd certain tiny, con- 
temporary souls, who are proving their fitness 
for civic duties by setting all duties and laws 
at naught. 



NOVEL POPE 



A NOVEL POPE 



^^HE man who knows it all has a 
degree from the university of self- 
consciousness, conferred by an unan- 
imous vote of all the faculties, and received 
with salvos of applause by a delighted, if 
not numerous, audience. Having been made 
in this way an accredited ambassador to the 
human race, he undertakes light-heartedly 
his trifling task of setting the world right. 

The popular novelist is the chief modern 
representative of a class which dates back to 
Eve, the first who wanted to "know it all." 
The novelist writes a story on the evils of 
rag-picking and introduces a number of 
thrilling descriptions of the back-yards of a 
great city, and moralizes over uncleanliness 
and all that. The novel is an instantaneous 
and complete success — in the advertising 
column. At once the back-yard specialist 
is equipped with unlimited stores of knowl- 



102 



MUSTAKD SEED 



edge. He qualifies for every political office 
and is suggested as a successor in a univer- 
sity to the antiquated professor who has 
written a collection of unread volumes on 
arts and sciences, but is unacquainted with 
the hitherto unfathomed and uncharted pos- 
sibilities of real life. 

The "best-seller" disdains these attempts 
to relegate him into comparative obscurity. 
His vocation is to impart the principles of 
government to his native country. An expert 
in ruins, he will be supreme in restoration. 
After reading more glowing reports from the 
press-agent, the novelist now feels competent 
to undertake a task which has been waiting 
this long while for his advent. There is the 
Pope of Rome who needs coaching; there 
are philosophy and theology which call for a 
thorough overhauling and a few coats of fresh 
paint; then he feels that the subject of the 
Ten Commandments has not received ade- 
quate treatment. Their Author did well, 
but many years have passed since these laws 
were formulated, and a live, "up-to-date" 
thinker must take hold and by progressive 
amendments make them contemporary with 



A NOVEL POPE 



103 



new thought. The next Ecumenical Council 
of the Church will be addressed by such emi- 
nent theologians as Whole Cane, John Liver- 
pool, Cora Lee, and other graduates of the 
Novel School of Divinity. 

The editor used to be the typical specimen 
of this erudite class, but his glory is now 
eclipsed. The drummer was another inter- 
esting species of the tribe. High Schools 
in various parts of the country furnish a large 
supply of candidates for the same honor. 
The careful cataloging of feline bones or a 
sniff at some test-tubes has succeeded in 
making children high and mighty, and their 
parents infinitesimal mites. All these, how- 
ever, are only omniscient; the novelist is a 
self-created and self-sustained genius, made 
out of nothing, and most omniscient. 

There is one sovereign remedy for the new 
novelist, intoxicated by the plaudits of friends 
and the pufifs of the advertiser. By knowing 
a little, he came to know everything; when 
he knows more, he will know less. The 
writer who is suffering from the subtle disease 
of one successful novel, will be cured by 
writing two dozen novels and by growing 



104 



MUSTARD SEED 



older. He may then get an inkling of the 
experience and wisdom that has come with 
centuries of age and multitudes of volumes. 
The Sunday newspapers might in that event 
have fewer schemes for the instant, complete 
and perfect amelioration of mankind and all 
its institutions. The Catholic Church might 
have fewer amendments to worry about; 
the Pope might not be chagrined over his 
comparatively insignificant infallability. In- 
deed, it takes time to discover the fact that 
the High School is not life, that the beating 
of a "cub-reporter" into shape is not a guar- 
antee of logic or ethics, and that the best of 
best-sellers is no successful substitute for a 
course of theology, or a well-founded charter 
entitling one to remake the universe. But 
with time we should cease to behold the di- 
verting spectacle of a two-thousand-year- 
old pupil going to school to a two-year-old 
teacher; or of the Pope of Rome coached in 
his office by an infallibility conferred through 
thirty-five large printings and translations 
into all modern languages, including the 
Scandinavian. 



CHUCKLING TO ONESELF 



CHUCKLING TO ONESELF 



N novels men are often described as 
chuckling to themselves. The operation 
is a healthy and holy one and should 
be transplanted from fiction to real life. A 
man makes a fool of himself so often that 
if he is not in the habit of chuckling to him- 
self he is lost. Take yourself too seriously 
and what a score of torments you are pre- 
paring for yourself! You might just as well 
take the eyelids from your eyes or cover 
your feet with sensitive excrescences and walk 
into the car crush after work is over. Do 
you prefer to wince and weep, or emit a 
chuckle .f^ It is a popular pastime for rejected 
suitors to shoot the young lady in the case 
and then themselves. If these young men — 
they are always green, callow and conceited 
— had learned the art of chuckling to them- 
selves, they would have saved good powder 
and would have had a sweeter revenge for 



108 



MUSTARD SEED 



their rejection, especially in case their chuckles 
were loud enough and lasted long enough to 
get another bride. There is the best revenge! 
A saving sense of humor has lessened the 
list of suicides, and chuckling to oneself is 
humor welling and bubbling and sparkling 
in the open air. 

Do women ever chuckle to themselves? 
In novels we do not think they do. In real 
life the time of chuckling for women begins 
about the age of eighty. This profound 
psychological fact accounts for grotesque 
fashions, militant suffragettes, gossip, family 
jars, hoity-toity scenes, tantrums and a few 
other female foibles. If you would stage 
an averted catastrophe in family life, pro- 
ceed thus: "John, the way our children — " 
Here John chuckles to himself, "The clothes 
I have, John — " Same business for John. 
"You are paying no attention, you horrid 
— " John still at it. At this point Jane 
leaves abruptly and the door rattles in har- 
mony with John's chuckle. Second scene 
occurs later in the day. Jane to Mrs. 
Hemphy: "I am in despair. I cannot get 
the least satisfaction out of that man of 



CHUCKLING TO ONESELF 109 



mine. He grins like an idiot, and it is so 
ludicrous I have to rush away in anger lest 
I laugh outright." 

Here is a test for you, ladies. Imagine 
yourseH walking down a crowded street with 
a size-tag in a prominent place on the back 
of your dress. I don't mean one of those 
embroidered labels of a fashionable milliner 
often accidentally (?) displayed over the 
church-pew, but a real, vulgar tag w4th 78 
or 96 on it. Having walked through the 
street with that, could you chuckle to your- 
self .^^ I know a man who carried a tag that 
way, on his coat, and about ten years after 
the event he could remember it without 
getting mad; later he even chuckled. When 
would this last action take place in your 
case.^ 

There is one class of people who make a 
science of chuckling to themselves. They 
are the saints. St. Francis *de Sales said 
once that he felt like taking his heart in his 
hands and throwing it at some one. He did 
not. *'Many bees in many days make a 
little honey. I won't throw away my hive 
of patience." There you have it. A chuckle 



110 



MUSTARD SEED 



is not a cackle or a sneer that runs you 
through with icicles. A chuckle is a good- 
natiu*ed, unctuous thing, with all the oil 
and all the gold of a laugh, but with none of 
a laugh's noise. It is humorous humility, 
patience put to music. It is honey-hived by 
experience and sweetened by charity, and 
when you part your lips to chuckle to your- 
self, you show the world the golden honey 
in the white comb. 



OT AT HOME 



NOT AT HOME 



EOPLE get away from cities that are 
to be besieged, or from States where 
w^ar is to rage, or from plague-stricken 
lands, or from houses on fire, and they leave 
in a hurry, not minding the expense. With 
more expense, with more energy, with more 
persistent efforts people are trying every 
day to get away from themselves. Cain, 
the murderer, figures in our dreams as a 
wanderer over the face of the earth, shun- 
ning the haunts of human life and trembling 
at the footfall of a man. But his wander- 
ings are limited when compared with the wide 
journeys many a soul will take to avoid 
catching sight of itself. A congressman not 
long ago told an incident of a negro who had 
been indulging too much in liquor. He imag- 
ined he was pursued by a horrible spectre. 
He ran with the swiftness of the wind, think- 
ing he had outstripped his pursuer, but just 




114 



MUSTARD SEED 



as he paused, he heard a mocking voice over 
his shoulder, ''Ha, you ran pretty fast then." 
There was a man behind him carrying his 
head on his hands! The hard drinker made 
off again, shouting: "That is nothing to the 
way I am going to run now." The world 
may increase in speed, in all modes of travel, 
but it can never go fast enough for those who 
want to get away from themselves. The 
world has many who are afraid to look over 
their shoulders, and they travel swiftly from 
home. But some day they will stop. 

Hundreds of letters to read and answer, 
thousands of figures to add up, customers 
and floor-walkers to satisfy, machines to make 
or to manage, products of various kinds of 
manufacture, to sell, to pack up, or to deliver, 
these are the stranglers of self-consciousness 
under the eight-hour law. Alas! the thoughts 
are awaiting open-shop and close-shop men as 
they get to the street. ''Here, boy, a paper, 
quick!" Then a dive into the subway and 
a dive into the news, and the thoughts of 
self are bafl3ed. But the time of thought will 
come. You wait and see. 

Business and work give way to dissipation, 



NOT AT HOME 



115 



and dissipation gives way to work and busi- 
ness. It is strain and stimulus and strain 
again until the break comes. The world 
rushes from the Arctic of life's work to the 
torrid equator of life's follies. There is no 
temperate zone of recollection and repose on 
life's globe. Every inhabitant must get 
away from thoughts of self. He will work 
them away and read them aw^ay, or gamble 
and play, or drink and drug them away. 
He will travel or hunt or fish them away, 
but away they must go. They will, however, 
return one day. 

America has the largest scrap-heap of any 
nation. There is always some new kind of 
building which necessitates tearing down the 
old, some new kind of equipment which 
obliges a man to tear out the old, some new 
kind of transportation which means tearing 
up the old. Perhaps it is this spirit of rest- 
lessness which has got into matrimony and has 
given America, that is, the United States 
of the same, the largest matrimonial scrap- 
heap of the w^orld. Certainly it is that spirit 
which has filled the tingling nerves and brim- 
ming veins of modern men and promises to 



116 MUSTARD SEED 



give America the record for the largest scrap- 
heap of discarded men. To get away from 
one's thoughts, a million swift desires are 
unloosed and pampered and satisjBed. Old 
thought, the snail, is indeed a slow traveler. 
He may crawl after the swift vehicle of desire, 
but he will finally overtake it and sit down 
face to face with the owner of the car as he 
sadly surveys its shattered fragments, 

St. James complained of one that took a 
single look at himself and straightway forgot 
what manner of man he was! What would 
he say to-day when people avoid even taking 
one glance into the mirror of self? Exile and 
sickness make some people see themselves. 
St. Helena sobered Napoleon. Pampeluna and 
Manresa sanctified Loyola. Death and judg- 
ment are needed to furnish a mirror for 
others and to burnish its surface .to reflect 
themselves fully and perfectly. May those 
selves be worth looking at eternally! Be- 
cause, then, my friend, you can not get away 
from thoughts of self. Your thoughts have 
come home and they will stay there. 



YOU WERE RIGHT 



/ 



YOU WERE RIGHT 




'HREE monosyllables with the selec- 
tion of easily pronounced vowels 
and consonants, yet what an agony 



their enumeration entails! Professors of 
elocution, schools of stammering, reform- 
ers of spelling, please take notice and solve 
this mystery of oral delivery. Can you 
not devise some means by which it will 
not be necessary for a man to have recourse 
to fortifying tonics or pass a season at a 
sanitarium in order to be able to say these 
three simple English words without gasping, 
without getting red in the face and without 
mopping a moist forehead? Theoretically, 
everyone, without exception, can go wrong; 
practically, everyone, with one limited excep- 
tion, does go wrong, and when it comes to 
a question of personal opinions and individual 
actions, the number of popes is unlimited. 
There is a fairy story told about a cashier 



120 



MUSTARD SEED 



in a New York house who refused to take 
back some money when he made a mistake 
in change. It would be fatal to his pro- 
fession and upset his bookkeeping to say to 
his customer, "You were right." He said 
"I was right." It is impossible to verify 
this story, which imposes on us the necessity 
of believing that a cashier would not take 
money, but the incident shows us that the 
difficulty in the use of these three words is 
not one of pronunciation, but one of grammar. 
Grammarians tell us that irregular verbs arose 
because some of their persons and tenses were 
used frequently and were thought to be the 
only parts of the verb, while other persons 
and tenses were used so rarely that they were 
thought to have ceased to be parts of the 
verb. It is very hard to conjugate the verb, 
"to be right." It has no second person in 
the past tense. It is an irregular verb. 

Consider the difficulty of large bodies 
saying, "You were right." Newspapers 
identify themselves with their numerous 
readers. Is the phrase: "You were right" 
stereotyped in any newspaper office? Poli- 
ticians speak for their parties, and parties 



YOU WERE RIGHT 121 

never are, never have been, never will be 
wrong. They sometimes observe a discreet 
silence or hurry over an incident, as a man 
will quicken his pace in a gloomy and danger- 
ous place. Politicians may sometimes say in 
very guarded phrases that information w^as 
meagre, that it is quite possible that the party 
was not always in complete accord mth what 
more mature deliberations, if opportimity 
had been offered for long thinking, would have 
perhaps suggested; but what politician has 
got as far as to say, ''I was mistaken," much 
less, "You were right"? 

If a politician makes such a statement, 
a nation never does. There was once a 
revolution that broke out on a certain narrow 
portion of the North American Continent. 
By a strange coincidence this great nation 
immediately recognized and upheld by its 
armies the small revolting fraction of a large 
state. Everyone outside the nation smiles 
significantly at the remarkable coincidences. 
Everyone in the nation knows in his heart 
individually that the transaction was not 
just what it should have been, and a large 
number would admit that it was wrong. But 



122 MUSTARD SEED 



let any one use in public a phrase which could 
remotely suggest that the nation could inti- 
mate: "You were right," and immediately 
there is an upheaval and explosion of ink 
and paper, with deafening detonations of 
flamboyant oratory all over the country. 

The Prodigal confessed he was wrong. 
Peter cried, *'You were right!" Judas did 
not get so far. He said, ''I was wrong," 
but shrank from admitting the fact to 
another. A modern poet has described hell 
as a sad realization of the lost days and lost 
opportunities of life. One after another these 
days point accusing fingers at the doomed 
man. They are his murdered selves, but he, 
the murderer, is left looking at his victim 
forever. "And thou thyself for all eternity." 
This is everlasting torment: to be forced to 
say, when to say it is fruitless: "You were 
right." 



STARTING A 
CONVERSATION 



STARTING A 
C 0 X V E R S A T I 0 X 




HIS is a work that has to be done 
so often that it is surprising no one 
has made a thorough study of the 



subject and reduced it to rule. The vari- 
ous chess-openings have been systematized 
and named. There is hardly any trade or 
sport in which the opening attack has not 
been carefully considered. The college grad- 
uate knows what to do if he wins the toss 
in football or debate. What will he do if 
he has the first inning m a conversation? 
He can not tell you. He looks over his list 
of electives and does not find conversation 
among them. 

But you will say that the opening of con- 
versation has already been determined by the 
common practice of the human race. Differ- 
ent languages may vary the expression, but 
the idea remains the same. The German 



126 



MUSTARD SEED 



may inquire about your "going," the French- 
man about your "carrying," the English- 
man about your "being," but they all refer 
politely to health. Health is by every right 
of custom, tradition, history and ethnology 
the universally accepted opening of all con- 
versations. We may as well admit at once 
that the fact can not be denied, but we 
might, in the language of logic, distinguish 
the terms and deny the consequences. We 
shall do so equivalently by referring to the 
title just above. We said starter, not opener. 
Everybody knows that the health question is 
just a tuning up, or what might be called a 
clearing of the throat, a sort of conversational 
nod. The real work remains after the health 
preliminaries have been dismissed. 

We now oflFer our topic, which is a suc- 
cessful starter of conversation and is equally 
successful in continuing and concluding the 
same duty of mankind. The topic is the 
"common enemy." Strangers have to skir- 
mish a little to find the common enemy. 
When the nationalities of each of the parties 
to the conversation are known, they at once 
have a large subject for discussion in the 



STARTING CONVERSATION 127 



•weaknesses of a second or third nation. 
Before that fertile subject is exhausted, the 
combatants know one another's cities, and 
with other nations disposed of, the character 
of other cities is located, brought within 
range, and riddled by an unflagging bom- 
bardment. If the conversers are neighbors, 
they have the people next door; if they are 
fellow-boarders, they have the people in the 
next room. 

Our topic is somewhat slow in getting under 
way where the conversation is between entire 
strangers. But its best performance can be 
seen where old friends meet. Here there is 
no skirmishing or diplomacy or mediation; 
hostilities are immediate. *'Mrs. So-and-so 
is at her old tricks." "I suppose you heard 
the latest about Hit t em." There is a glance 
or two around, a drawing together of chairs, 
a lowering of voices, and the stage is set for 
a successful conversation and killing. It be- 
comes somewhat embarrassing and tragic at 
times, if one talker has to sacrifice a personal 
friend. But there is compensation. The 
other will gladly allow a friend to go up in 
smoke for the sake of promoting extensive 



128 MUSTARD SEED 



conversation. The accepted ending of the 
scene is phrased in the sentence: "Now, re- 
member, this is all entre nous'' The last 
words are French and are translated: Touch 
it up and give it to the Associated Press." 

You will fail if you try to start a conver- 
sation or keep it up by praising others. Some 
persons can not pronounce one word and some 
can not pronounce another, but no one seems 
to be able to pronounce praises. The com- 
mon enemy is the unfailing, ever reliable topic. 
You remember that Pilate and Herod had 
not spoken for a long time. They finally 
found their tongues when they got a common 
enemy. Their first conversation, no doubt, 
interlarded with words such as "fool," "male- 
factor," was the crucifixion of Christ's 
character. 



PUBLICITY AS A 
PANACEA 



PUBLICITY AS A 
PANACEA 

F publicity has all the curative powers 
its advocates claim for it, then we may 
JJL expect soon a radical and complete 
improvement in morality. Publicity is ad- 
ministered in adult doses during all the 
year, and with the advent of the fall elec- 
tions we expect an increase in the dosage by 
way of campaign capsules. Indeed, with the 
vast modern manufactory of publicity at work 
in press, platform, and pulpit, we are sur- 
feited with the panacea. 

The time has come to subject this new 
modern remedy to analysis. Does publicity 
cure? Light and air are the great means of 
physical health. The deadly microbe thrives 
in the dark. Is there an analogy in the moral 
order? It we let in the light, shall we destroy 
the germs that attack the moral constitution? 
No remedy has had a better chance to have 



132 



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its merits tested than publicity. The press 
has been supplying us with it every day in 
constantly increasing quantities. We should 
be immune to all moral diseases, but we do 
not seem to be. The stage for antitoxin to 
develop has come; the recuperative powers 
of the moral nature should long ago have 
asserted themselves; there should at least be 
premonitory signs of convalescence, but the 
latest bulletin from the sick-room of the great 
patient, the world's conscience, indicates no 
improvement, rather records a deterioration. 
Divorce has had publicity applied in every 
shape and form; the plague is increasing. 
Lynching has had ample opportunities to try 
the cure; the patient is no better. In fact, 
there is not a moral disease on the calendar 
to which the remedy has not been applied. 
The result is always the same. Any innocu- 
ous patent medicine on the market can 
produce more certified cures in a day than 
publicity has made in a century. 

Facts show that publicity does not cure. 
Reason will show that it can not cure. In- 
deed, publicity seems rather to be a poison 
than a panacea. A recent writer has declared 



PUBLICITY AS A PANACEA 133 



that a knowledge of physiology has helped to 
decrease motherhood. People who advocate 
publicity forget that if you expose a crime, 
you expose also the methods of the criminal. 
The fate of the exposed may deter some from 
the path of ruin, but may teach others to 
follow more skillfully the way pointed out. 
''Don't get caught" is a principle that will 
make men cautious, but it will not make them 
conscientious. The correlative of publicity is 
human respect, and human respect is success- 
ful in making hypocrites, not in curing moral 
degenerates. Publicity leads to legislation, and 
mere legislation is not medicine but quackery. 

The fault with all these panaceas and new 
methods of reform is the same. They fail to 
include an essential element in their pre- 
scriptions. The only panacea of reform is 
conscience; w^hen the remedies of reform are 
subjected to analysis, and you find in the 
classification of constituent elements that 
there is of conscience not even a trace, then 
you may throw away the contents of your 
test-tube, and begin your experiments all over 
again. If you leave out conscience, there can 
be no reform. There may be pretence; there 



134 



MUSTARD SEED 



may be hypocrisy; there may be a delusive, 
temporary improvement, but in the last 
analysis you must have conscience, if you 
would have true, sincere reform. The germ 
that causes moral degeneracy is lack of con- 
science, and publicity is not the serum to 
inoculate men. Back to conscience we must 
go for our correctives, and back to Christ 
for our consciences. "'Instaurare omnia in 
Chris to" were the first public words of Pope 
Pius X; "instaurare omnia in Christo" are 
the last words on the question of moral 
panaceas. 



NOBODY CARES 



NOBODY CARES 

1^ — I [ — ^HIS is a sad cry to utter. When a 
man or a woman allows that com- 
11 plaint to take shape in the soul and 
fill the mouth with its bitterness, you may 
be sure that it is a black, severe storm 
which has flung such salt spray to the lips. 
Loneliness goes deep in the human heart. 
Man is a gregarious animal, and he loves to 
flock with his kind. Even if you maroon him 
in mid-ocean, he will not yet say, "Nobody 
cares." Enoch Arden did not utter those sad 
words, when he looked over miles of ocean, 
but he did, when he looked a few feet into 
a lighted room and saw his wife and children 
belonging to another. One need not be a chip 
on the high seas to be alone. The stranger in 
a large city feels his isolation all the more be- 
cause millions around him are going somewhere 
and he is heading nowhere. They exchange 
with daily definiteness home for work and 



138 



MUSTARD SEED 



work for home, and in both they meet some 
who care. It is the man who is away from 
home and business that feels himseK a drifting 
waif on these shifting tides of Hfe. The blaze 
of the saloon, the hilarious music and dancing, 
the shrillness of forced laughter, make an 
irresistible appeal to his loneliness. When 
John visits the city, he may easily become 
Don Juan. He finds that the doors on the 
saloon are light and easy-swinging and yield 
to a finger touch, while it takes several strong 
arms to push open the heavy church doors. 
''Nobody cares," is often found just before: 
"Here goes," in the text of many biographies. 

The famous Haroun al Raschid, who lived 
in golden days, used to wander around on 
Arabian nights and visit the poor of his city. 
He was an early Oriental slummer. No doubt, 
he was charitably inclined towards others, 
but he was also practicing a very high kind 
of charity towards himself. Men in high 
office have to be very much alone, and Haroun 
was a founder of a ''get-together club." 
Our good President took the country, that 
is, the newspaper reporters, into his confidence 
not so long ago and gave no uncertain evi- 



NOBODY CARES 



139 



dence that he felt the isolation of his posi- 
tion. How would he have felt if he were 
the Pope whom Italian compatriots, w^ith no 
pity for his seclusion of office, have restricted 
still more to a single house and single garden. 
One of the sad privileges of old age is attend- 
ing more funerals than dances, and the old 
must often shake their heads sadly whisper- 
ing, ''What does my presence matter? No- 
body cares." Criminals too feel the spell of 
this attraction for their kind. When they 
have slipped through the widely ramified 
meshes of the law, when they have escaped 
the scent of the blood-hound, the patient de- 
tectives know the weakness of the human 
heart. It is a pitiful necessity which makes 
these agents of the law pounce down on their 
prey as it goes back from its lonely isolation 
to someone who cares. 

There are several ways of breaking down 
the barriers of isolation all more helpful than 
dissipation or despair. When the aloofness 
of office or the helplessness of old age do not 
allow one to be the hail-fellow well met of 
college days, when the body narrows its 
horizon, the mind can widen its horizon. If 



140 



MUSTARD SEED 



you cannot boisterously slap your chums on 
the shoulder, you can along the broad high- 
ways of literature clasp hands of fellowship 
with the myriads who throng those goodly 
ways. The one who reads has correspondence 
from all places and persons and times, and 
the mail is heavy. 

Further and better! If it is hard to maroon 
the mind it is harder to maroon the heart. 
Give a mother the love of one child and she 
is never lonely. The soldier out on the picket- 
line or scouting alone, bears warm within him 
the trust of his leader and feels no isolation. 
If with under-water cables and overhead 
wireless one throb of electricity makes the 
whole world kin, there is a swifter message, 
a more sensitive response and far stronger 
bonds from heart to heart. Would you never 
be lonely, never isolated, then make the heart 
keenly alive toward Him Who always cares. 
With Him you can never be marooned or 
alone, but rather will be a multitude. "One 
with God is a majority," said an American 
orator, and an earlier and greater has writ- 
ten: "Casting all your cares on Him, for He 
hath care of you." 



BORROWING TROUBLE 



BORROWING TROUBLE 

ONE day you start to read a docu- 
ment sent you through the mail and 
your hair begins to stand on end. 
How ignorant you have been of the fact 
that dangers threaten you on all sides! 
You hear of bankrupt business, ruined homes, 
broken hearts and new-made graves. You are 
told to behold the lands denuded of their 
primeval forests, the teeming rivers run dry, 
the once laughing population decimated by 
plagues, the prodigals swarming on the park- 
benches, while the elder sons at home are 
twiddling their fingers and knocking their 
heels together in helpless idleness under 
tottering roofs. Volcanoes, tidal-waves, con- 
flagrations, earthquakes, droughts, cloud- 
bursts, typhoons, simoons, deadly siroccos 
are simultaneously and desperately attacking 
your fellow-countrymen. '*It is the Black 
and Blue Peril upon us," you shriek in horror. 
"Who are the monsters doing all this.^^" You 



144 



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turn back to the title-page and you find with 
some reUef that you have been reading Cam- 
paign Document No. 789. You recall that an 
election is coming on, and at such an important 
time a politician is a borrower of trouble, 
second to none, if he happens to be out of 
oflSce. Put him in office, and he sets aside his 
blue glasses for rosy ones. 

Your young poet is an expert borrower of 
trouble. He loves to round up flocks of woes 
into the precincts of his verse. He is always 
''holding the 'phone" for the "still, sad music 
of humanity." Some other mourners are not 
contented with inheriting all the sorrows of 
the past and annexing all contemporary 
gloom, but they must get an option on the 
sadness of posterity. It was a peculiarly sus- 
ceptible Chinamen, who at a birthday party 
given to about fifty relatives, was found 
shedding copious tears. When anxious in- 
quirers began to search for the head-waters 
of this new river, they were informed that 
the host was weeping because he had just 
realized that in two hundred years he would 
have so many relatives he would be unable 
to accommodate them all in his house. 



BORROWING TROUBLE 145 

China ought to have the prize in the In- 
ternational Contest of Trouble Borrowers, but 
in this lugubrious competition the place of honor 
must be awarded to the mother of a first 
child, or an only one. After an Irish dozen 
of children the faculty for borrowing trouble 
grows tired and stops working, but with the 
first one nothing except the conglomerate of 
horrors which Shakespeare's Tvdtches put into 
their cauldrons to the tune of "double, double, 
toil and trouble," or perhaps the catalog of 
miseries which can be healed by the latest 
patent medicine, can exceed in variety and 
malignancy the choice collection of troubles 
which a fond mother will conjure up in a 
minute around her darling. She stands at 
the door through which her offspring has 
wandered, and as with dry-eyed despair she 
faces the w^ide, wide world, she is benumbed 
by the multiplied possibilities of disaster with 
which civilization has armed itself against her 
single treasure. The universality of her ap- 
prehensions is on a par with that of the Irish- 
man whose drove of pigs escaped from him 
and left him crying out in dismay: *'They 
will run up all manner of streets!*' So will 



146 



MUSTARD SEED 



her darling, and automobiles go on for- 
ever. 

For this pessimistic procHvity the old adage 
gave as a remedy the sage advice: Do not 
cross any bridges until you come to them. 
The great English dramatist, seeing the uncer- 
tainty of the affairs of men, has his two pagan 
characters ''reason with the worst that may 
befall." A good rule that, if the reasoning is 
on Christian and not pagan principles, as in 
the play! Better, however, than all proverbs 
and plays are the words of Him Who bor- 
rowed others' troubles in order to lighten 
them. Such borrowings are safe and lucra- 
tive investments, but to borrow trouble, in 
order to add bHndly to one's own, spells 
bankruptcy. Therefore, we are told: ''Suf- 
ficient for the day is the evil thereof." The 
Cross indeed must be borne, but its heavier 
weight rests on Him, and there is no doubt a 
special significance in the fact that we are 
told not to burden our shoulders for life. 
"Take up your cross daily." Don't borrow 
three hundred and sixty-four other crosses. 
Perhaps there will be only one. 



WILL-HYGIENE 



WILL-HYGIENE 



M 



ERE knowledge will never succeed 
in checking or correcting crime, 
the press to the contrary not^\4th- 



standing. What everyone knows is not 
what everyone wills, much less what every- 
one does. The shameless publicity of the 
divorce courts has not lessened the num- 
ber of divorces; the daily exposure of the 
"man higher up" has not stopped the looting 
of the public funds, and so on to the end of 
the chapter. In the same way, though, the 
advertising columns of the papers are crowded 
with notices of books which profess to unveil 
all secrets of knowledge to everybody: *'\Miat 
Boys Should Know," "mat Girls Should 
Know," "mat Men Should Know," it is 
more than evident that no corresponding bet- 
terment of morals has resulted. We are 
foolish in relegating to the attics of the mind 
as so much mental junk the wise reticence of 



150 MUSTARD SEED 



the past in matters of crime. "I know the 
higher way; I give it the sanction of my ap- 
proval," said Ovid, ''but I follow the lower." 
Shakespeare has told us of the pastors who 
point out to others the path of righteousness 
while they themselves ''the primrose path of 
dalliance tread," and there is a still more 
potent authority on that topic, if it were 
needed. "I see another law in my members 
fighting against the law of my mind and cap- 
tivating me." St. Paul puts the issue clearly. 
It is not the law of the mind which needs 
strengthening, but the law of the members 
that needs restraining; not more knowl- 
edge, but more will is required. In the very 
lesson in which you reveal the evils of sen- 
sual indulgence, you are likely to elicit the 
attractiveness of sensual gratification. The 
evils are remote; the pleasure is present and 
insistent. The drunkard in presence of temp- 
tation is not going to be saved from his in- 
dulgence by tables of statistics. 

There are indeed evils in ignorance, but the 
evils of premature knowledge are more numer- 
ous and more disastrous. This is especially 
true in the matter of purity, which is at stake 



WILL-HYGIENE 



151 



in the school training of what is called sex- 
hygiene. The few broad facts which mother 
and father must and do impart in the ordinary 
training of the home will be suflScient for the 
vast majority; and all sensible people know 
that the most wholesome thing for the child 
is to forget the facts of sex and not have them 
obtruded on his attention. Early enlighten- 
ment may develop more the law of the mem- 
bers than the law of the mind. 

There is, however, a course of sex-hygiene 
which all can safely follow and safely recom- 
mend. Instead of being worried about in- 
creasing the knowledge, be energetic and 
persistent in decreasing the desire. The man 
with murder in his heart will be cured by 
getting the murder out of his heart, not by 
dangHng a noose before his eyes. It is the 
incentive that should be removed. The medi- 
cine will come too late. What will your ana- 
tomical exhibits in the class-room avail if the 
bill-boards, the shop-windows, the trolley cars, 
the advertising columns, the shameless fash- 
ions, the facts of sensational journalism, the 
fiction of sensational magazines, keep passions 
in a ferment? Inflamed desires make Uttle 



152 



MUSTAKD SEED 



of disease and death; they clamor for indul- 
gence. Let the sex-hygienist put away the 
countless seductions which assail mankind and 
womankind on all sides and they will effect 
something. Let the young have less desire, 
not more knowledge; strength of will, not 
complete information. 



TALKING TO ONESELF 



TALKING TO ONESELF 



AN ordinary man looks around and 
makes sure no one is present before 
he begins to talk to himself. He 
knows that talking to oneself is considered 
a sign of a weak mind. Yet, why should 
the soliloquy be excluded from public .^^ You 
may sing, you may whistle, you may tap 
your fingers idly or impatiently, you may 
play a musical instrument, but you may not 
let your thoughts rise above their very sub- 
dued whisper unless you are in complete 
privacy. beg pardon, did you say any- 
thing?" we may perhaps hear and with a 
blush of shame at being caught talking aloud 
to ourselves, we hastily reply, "Nothing at 
all." We are afraid of being classed with 
the weak-minded. Why, to-day, they are 
excluding the soliloquy even from the stage, 
and when dictographs become cheaper, a man 
will not dare to swear even in private. The 



156 



MUSTARD SEED 



speaker will not address the sides of his taxi- 
cab with the splendid retort, the brilUant 
epigram and crushing argument which un- 
happily did not come half an hour before. 
The man who bumps his toe in the dark will 
choke his rebellious thoughts to silence. That 
business plan which is going to overwhelm 
your rivals, that anticipated exultation in the 
joys of the new honor you are ambitioning, 
can be given no expression. You may gesticu- 
late and move your lips with the explosive 
vehemence of a character talking in a moving- 
picture, but may not speak aloud, or the 
dictograph "will get you if you don't 
watch out." 

There is no special reason for sorrow over 
the fact that the art of speaking to oneseK is 
disappearing. It may even be a thing to be 
thankful for that many a ridiculous fury 
kindled to vehemence by personal and private 
eloquence will be quenched through lack of 
verbal fuel. The triumphant answers to pet 
enemies may be less frequent because their 
authors have ceased rehearsing them to them- 
selves. It is very hard to refrain from utter- 
ing to other audiences what has been so often 



TALKING TO ONESELF 



157 



applauded by enthusiastic self. The thought 
which has been allowed to utter itself in sound 
is not far from launching itself in act. If 
wickedness loses its voice, it may be so weak- 
ened as to lose the power of thinking. 

Anger and fear indulge, more than content- 
ment does, in talking to self. It is naturally 
hard to know the vocabulary of a language 
which is spoken only to one, but if we may 
judge by personal tendencies ninety-nine per 
cent of the words uttered to oneself are not 
fit for polite society. The caddy who said that 
a golfer on a certain trying occasion had 
recourse to the most profane silence he ever 
witnessed, fortunately prevented by his pres- 
ence some interesting additions to the language 
of intense emotion. A private explosion may 
indeed reheve the overcharged heart, but it 
may also stir up a languishing resentment to 
more vigorous action. Put your finger on 
the lips of fear when it would talk to you in 
private and you will probably spare yourself 
the painful toil of traveling over various 
bridges which in reality you shall never cross. 
Indulge in the silent satisfaction of calm and 
peaceful joy. 



158 



MUSTARD SEED 



When the pagans were alone, they talked 
to the trees or the springs or the waves, in 
all of which they believed guardian spirits ex- 
isted. When the poets are alone, they talk a 
great deal to inanimate nature, if we may 
believe what they put into print. Those of 
us who are not pagans or poets have a more 
consoling and comforting practice when alone, 
and it is guaranteed to do away with all need 
of talking to oneself. "Enter into thy 
chamber and having shut the door, pray to 
thy Father in secret and thy Father Who 
seeth in secret will repay thee." 



JUST AS YOU SAY 



JUST AS YOU SAY 



^*^HIS title is a short formula for 
civilization. The words herald the 
substitution of deference for force, 
of charity for selfishness, of obedience for 
wilfulness. The young find them hard to 
utter; the old, easier. When ideas are new 
in the mind, when hope is dazzling bright 
and difficulties disappear in its splendor, 
when experience is limited, then the 
lips with difficulty shape these words. 
But test the exultant plans by the acid 
of experience, sober enthusiasm by the 
humility of failure, broaden sympathy by 
the knowledge that comes with years, and 
most men and women will anticipate their 
own objections or prejudices and cry, ''Just 
as you say." Time, however, is not always 
a softener; it is sometimes a toughener. 
If it mellows the fruit, it hardens the wood 
and bark, and some hearts turn the sap of 



162 



MUSTABD SEED 



life into fiber rather than into luscious pulp. 
The self-made man who has been spoiled 
with constant success, whose father made 
the best shoe-lasts before him and whose 
son is learning to make the best shoe-lasts, 
just as he does, after him, is likely to ex- 
claim, "Just as I say," at least when there 
is question of shoe-lasts. Yet it was a man 
of that description, a man proud of his 
family success, who nevertheless was defer- 
ential in other points. He did not wish to 
go beyond his lasts and was ready to utter 
"Just as you say" when you could get him 
away from his pet subject. 

Take that phrase from the language of the 
army, and the army becomes a disorganized 
mob. Take it from business, and the wheels 
of commerce are blocked. "Just as I say" 
is grit on the bearings; "Just as you say" 
is a lubricant. What is it that marks off 
society from anarchy? It is the recognition 
of authority, and recognition of authority 
is a philosophical and lordly way of ex- 
pressing, "Just as you say." 

In the famous Greek tragedy of King 
(Edipus there is a stormy fight going on be- 



JUST AS YOU SAY 163 

tween the king and his brother-in-law. It 
has reached that helpless stage so often wit- 
nessed in wordy quarrels, where one com- 
batant almost out of breath shouts, ''You 
did," and the other combatant equally 
breathless replies with the convincing and 
powerful cry, I didn't." There were sev- 
eral ways out of this deadlock besides the 
death of both parties, but the brother-in- 
law heard something he could agree with 
and at once interjected, ''Just as you say," 
or what amounts to that. The ultimatums 
disappeared for a time at least, and reason 
seized the opportunity to talk. "Just as 
you say," will always win a truce, if it does 
not succeed in avoiding hostilities. 

The eloquent Secretary of State, Mr. 
Bryan, has spoken many excellent speeches 
in his busy life, but his biographers ought 
to rank a recent sentence of his far above 
all more lengthy and more elaborate exhi- 
bitions of oratory. "Is that your last word.^" 
(last word is English for ultimatum) he was 
asked in an exchange of diplomatic con- 
ferences, and Mr. Bryan replied in words 
which should never die, "There is no last 



164 



MUSTARD SEED 



word between friends." We might risk 
spoiling the finality of that phrase by stat- 
ing that if there could be a last word, it 
would be, **Just as you say," which comes 
immediately before, "Just as we say," and 
with that harmonious chord the music of 
friendly conversation comes to a happy 
close. 

There is yet another place where this 
magic phrase wins wondrous victories. It is 
heard there softer than a whisper, but results 
in the eloquence of deeds and speaks in power 
through a life of holiness. What is a saint 
but one who to every prompting of con- 
science replies at once and effectively, "Just 
as you say." How can we better sum up 
the life of the Saint of Saints than in that 
sublime and divine way of voicing, "Just 
as you say," the courageous words which 
made Calvary, "Not my will but thine be 
done." 



EQUIPMENT OF 
SOUL-CRITIC 



EQUIPMENT OF ASOUL 
CRITIC 



qualify as a critic of a poem or a 
picture, of wine or cloth, of horse- 
J[ shoes or bricks, demands a certain 
training, some study and knowledge of the 
subject to be criticized, but to be a critic 
of character, to appraise the value of a 
soul, to pronounce infallible decisions on a 
person's actions and purposes, to fathom the 
heart, whose secret depths only a God's 
omniscience has explored, all this requires 
no preparation, no skill, almost no knowledge. 
What will be your motives if you make up 
your mind not to be the only member of 
the human race abstaining from this uni- 
versal occupation? Rarely vdll you acknowl- 
edge the motive even to yourself. But if 
you emit the harsh grating and squeaking 
of complaining criticism, you vrill recall, if 
you think a moment, that there has been a 



168 



MUSTARD SEED 



rub somewhere, there has been an exposed 
surface and there has been friction. If you, 
as a qualified critic, ascribe to another the 
powers and perhaps the presence of Beelze- 
bub, you will be dimly conscious that the 
other has clashed with your own preroga- 
tive, has exposed your pretensions and 
through lack of the right lubricant on your 
part has drawn from you the shrill screech 
of friction, soul-friction, sadder and more 
discordant than that of the hub and axle. 

What will be the substance of your pro- 
nouncements, eminent soul-critic? Take a 
vague rumor or a tattered truth, soiled and 
rent by constant handling, or listen to the 
report of a surmise of a hearsay of a 
conjecture and with that reliable evidence 
* blacken, revile and dispatch in a superior 
fashion the immortal soul to whose study 
you are at present devoting your adequate 
abilities. In methods you will find it best 
to imitate the unapproachable propensities 
of the mole and the refined tastes of the 
buzzard. The most expert soul-critics con- 
vey their criticisms through others, remain- 
ing themselves in the background. They 



A SOUL-CRITIC 



169 



hold the purse and succeed in inspiring 
others to protect against any waste which 
might else have swelled their own possessions. 

When you come to the actual criticism, 
borrow some well-known truth universally 
admitted, such as, "No good can come from 
Nazareth," or "He is a Samaritan," or 
"Everybody says so." Then with that su- 
periority of intuition which puts you above 
all little cramping rules of logic boldly 
assert that the place of a man's birth in- 
evitably establishes his worthlessness, deduce 
from the sound of his name the unsoundness 
of his mind and argue irresistibly from the 
way he walks to the utter corruption of his 
moral constitution. Admit no limitations 
to your infallibility. Speak out with assur- 
ance, like the eminent soul-critic of earlier 
days, who roundly asserted that if this man 
happened to be a prophet. He would know 
that she was a sinner. Do not let your 
confidence be shaken if as a fact He was a 
prophet and did know and she was not then 
a sinner. Such trifling things as facts should 
not hinder one who wishes to become a mas- 
ter of soul-criticism. You should say with 



170 MUSTARD SEED 

the famous judge, "I refuse to listen to the 
other side: it has a tendency to confuse the 
court." 

When you have thus equipped yourself, 
for this chosen pursuit of most of mankind, 
you will be in great demand. Wherever a 
conversation languishes, step up at once and 
throw upon its dying embers your choice 
fuel and it will flame up grandly. Your 
most delectable occupation, it will be, after 
the example of better equipped spirits, to 
throw souls into flames of fire. Let me 
urge you in conclusion not by any means to 
stray toward a certain Mount or listen to 
the words of One there being nailed to a 
Cross. If you were to hear and heed His 
words, "Father, forgive them, they know not 
what they do," your education as a soul- 
critic would be ruined and your occupation 
forever gone. 



GIANT OAKS FROM 
LITTLE ACORNS 



GIANT OAKS FROM 
LITTLE ACORNS 



w 



HEN a spring on the hill-side bub- 
bles up from its sandy bottom, it 
starts a rill down the slope. For 



a while the silver thread creeps along, 
and then it pushes its crystal nose against 
a diminutive knoll — a mountain for its 
littleness. There is a moment's pause; the 
flow is stemmed. A problem arises, and 
we eagerly watch to see whether the tremb- 
ling water will run to the right or to the left. 
With a leap, the pent-up rill rushes off for- 
ever to the right, hurries down to the plain, 
and broadens below into a stream. It was 
the stubborn opposition of a tiny pebble just 
to the left of the knoll that determined for 
all time the bed of the stream. 

In the lives of great men there is often such 
a pause as we have seen on the hill-side. 
The happiness or misery of thousands, the 



174 



MUSTARD SEED 



welfare of a people, the destinies of a nation, 
are determined, sometimes, by the merest 
chance, and in the more wonderful chanceless 
workings of Divine Providence, a slight acci- 
dent would seem to decide the career and 
fate of countless souls. Some people, it 
might be boldly said, have been saints from 
their very cradles. But more have had to 
undergo the struggles of self-reform and the 
pains of conversion. It is in the latter class 
that we may especially discover the appar- 
ently chance causes that God makes use of 
to work wonders, causes that we should call 
trivial, were their results not so important. 

When a man looks with his mind's eye 
back, thro' some four hundred years, and fixes 
his mind's gaze on the daring hero of Pam- 
peluna slowly convalescing, what are the 
thoughts that awake within him; what are the 
feelings that fill his heart? Surely he thinks 
of the glories that God has won for his Church 
by that stricken soldier. His memory recalls, 
his mind dwells upon, his heart grows glad 
at, the many peoples won to Christ, and the 
great multitudes instructed in human knowl- 
edge, and the countless souls raised to the 



OAKS FROM ACORNS 



175 



heights of sanctity by the followers of the 
wounded Lord of Loyola. His imagination 
kindles at these thoughts, he is transported 
back to the awful moment when the ambi- 
tious Inigo calls for a book of chivalry; his 
interest in the reply engrosses him; he 
trembles as if such a book might yet be 
found, and seems to doubt whether he may 
consider Xavier and Campion, Suarez and 
Aquaviva, Bourdalone and Secchi as secure 
yet to God and His Church. He is finally 
relieved. No novel can be found, and the 
newspaper had not, as yet, been invented. 
Inigo, of Loyola, receives the Life of Christ 
and His Saints, and becomes St. Ignatius of 
Loyola. Down the centuries flows the grow- 
ing tide of his great army, whose currents 
were directed in the right way by a happy 
defect in the reading facilities of Loyola 
Castle. 



STOOPING TO CONQUER 



STOOPING TO CONQUER 

HEN some people bend, you can 
fancy you hear their vertebrae 
creak. They are as supple as a 
crowbar and as free from friction in 
negotiating a stooping posture as an iron 
joint thick with rust. Do not be too quick 
in ascribing all stiffness to pride. It is true 
that pride is unsurpassed in that particular 
department. Travelers admire the colored 
women of the West Indies for their erect 
carriage. It is the custom for the natives 
there to put their weighty burdens upon their 
heads and a course of that training from the 
pickaninny to the mammy stage gives these 
ladies the lines of a drum-major. Consider 
then the stiffness imparted by pride when 
one through all the moments of his conscious 
life is balancing with a high-lifted brow the 
colossal weight of an importance but dimly 
recognized by any except its appreciative 




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possessor. We should rather look for the 
EiflFel Tower to bow with true Parisian po- 
liteness and in lissome, willowy ease as 
expect to get the slightest inclination from 
pride without an infinite deal of harsh 
friction. 

Yet if pride is the worst opponent of true 
condescension and in its moments of great- 
est triumph does but succeed in giving a 
poor imitation, a terrifying caricature of 
the real virtue, do not for that reason think 
that pride is the only thing that irons out 
the bend, puts a starched collar around the 
neck and develops Arctic conditions on the 
face. Sometimes an unhappy shyness or 
awkwardness or inexperience or sensitiveness 
or some other lamented weakness leaves one 
helplessly cold and helplessly uncondescend- 
ing. Father Wassmann, who has spent a 
life-time studying ants, says that the only 
reason why we cannot tame these wonderful 
insects is that we are too big and blundering. 
If fingers are at times thumbs, they must 
be veritable elephant hoofs when they start 
in to pet and fondle an ant. There is the 
precise predicament that confronts many a 



STOOPING TO CONQUER 181 



man whose heart is warm with sympathy 
and whose starchedness is wilted to tearful 
compassion by a baby crying in a railroad 
train. He wants to do something, but he is 
deterred and frozen stiff by the appalling 
vision of the bull in the china-shop. He 
dodges behind a newspaper, and his female 
neighbors, who by mysterious words and 
dexterous gestures are wheedling smiles out 
of tears, look at the newspaper and become 
militant against this latest exhibition of the 
brute. 

Oh, the wonderful condescension of true 
love! The toughest steel that has been made 
bomb-proof by years of pride, cannot remain 
unmolten an instant in the glowing fire of 
love. On the street love bends over the poor 
and crippled; in the hospital it stoops with 
winning smile and patient care above the 
rows of outstretched sufferers; in the nur- 
sery — look there and see the world's most 
touching picture of condescension! There 
queens doff their royalty, and glaciers merge 
into gulf -streams. The loftiest dignity that 
ever held the human race at a distance, there 
stoops to a few inches and a few ounces of 



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bleating weakness and is contentedly, bliss- 
fully busy with the tiniest trifles. 

In that scene, haply common . enough, we 
have an answer to the little girl who pro- 
tested against the reproof that God was 
displeased at some fault: "Why should God 
mind?" she urged. He need not, but He 
does. His infinite condescension stoops from 
eternity to time, from divinity to humanity, 
from the infinite to the narrow measures of 
space. He condescends to be sad at man's 
coldness and glad with man's goodness, and 
it is the love of our Father for His own 
children which brings Him down to their 
little, very little hearts. 



I HAVE MADE UP MY 
MIND 



I H A V E MADE UP MY MIND 



CRYSTALS are beautiful things. Many 
precious stones are crystals. The dia- 
mond is a crystal, and the quartz 
family sparkles in a variety of colors on 
cuffs and neckties and rings and wherever 
else the adventitious aids of nature's quarries 
can accentuate native beauty by a new at- 
traction or relieve the eye for the absence of 
beauty by a distracting substitute. Crystals 
are as wonderful in their birth as they are 
glorious in their full groTsiih, They solidify 
out of molten masses or marshal along their 
rigid lines when some liquid evaporates or, 
more rarely, start into being from condensed 
vapors. It is a never-ceasing source of won- 
der to see the multitude of molecules move 
into line like well-drilled soldiers. 

Crystals are usually handsome, but they 
are always hard and they have sharp edges 
and follow rigid lines and protrude into 



186 



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awkward points. Now if crystals had brains 
and a tongue in addition to their other fine 
qualities, they would find it hard not to be 
proud. They would at once be put with 
that class of people which is also likely to be 
rigid and hard and angular, the people who 
have made up their mind. It would be 
desirable to add the crystals to this family of 
crystallized souls. They might impart some 
of their beauty to their human counterparts, 
who do not furnish us with many precious 
stones or desirable ornaments. 

The process of making up one's mind is 
mysterious indeed. If the process were put 
in other more intelligible terms, the makers 
might not flatter themselves so often upon 
what they have made. "I have made up 
my mind," is in most cases only a self-de- 
ception, a diamond statement of a charcoal 
reality. You should rather say you are set 
on having your own way, that nothing can 
change you, that there is very little reasoning 
of the mind but much stubbornness of the 
will in what you are pleased to think you 
have made up. Like your brother crystals 
you have cooled from some fiery state, in 



MADE UP MY MIND 



187 



your case, one of anger or resentment; you 
have sharpened an edge on your tongue; 
you have developed a very stony, if very 
bright, look in the eye, and all your features 
have hardened into rigid lines. If you have 
made up your mind, there is no need of 
clenching the fists; the nails may hurt the 
palm. There is no need of gritting the teeth; 
by that you gratify no one but the dentist. 
Mankind commonly comes into touch with 
crystals in two ways, in the form of ice and 
some kinds of sand-paper, and these are cold 
and rough articles. It is, as crystallograph- 
ers tell us, the molecular constitution of 
matter which is responsible for crystals, and 
if you who have made up your mind into 
ice or fractured quartz on sand-paper, could 
look into the molecules of your so-called 
mind, you would find strange lines of force. 
Jealousy and spite and prejudices and 
pique and selfishness, these are the builders 
of human crystals. 

Happily such are not always the forces 
making up men's minds. The Catholic who 
has made up his mind about the truths of 
his faith in obedience to God's word is a 



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precious stone and may be as unyielding as 
you will. The happy couple who make up 
their minds finally at God's altar with 
God's blessings are a combination of jewels; 
they are twin crystals and may their made- 
up minds know no cleavage! It comes to 
this then, that it all depends upon the mind- 
maker. If error or malice are the mind- 
makers, then mere hardness is no excellence. 
Herod made up his mind to cut off the head 
of the Baptist because of those at table, and 
Pilate resolved upon a worse murder because 
the voices of the mob prevailed. If, however, 
truth and goodness give firmness and beauty 
to the mind, if the will hardens into solidity 
out of the fire of charity, then adamantine 
infrangibility gives an added lustre to your 
fairness of soul. You are a crusader who 
bears a blood-red cross and have made up 
your mind because God wills it. 



LILLIPUTIAN SPIRITS 



LILLIPUTIAN SPIRITS 

SUPPOSE you lived in a pin-hole; 
think of the magnificent arch of sky 
which would bend over your head; 
sweep your gaze around upon the wide 
horizon encircling your vision. A rain-drop 
would be a deluge; a grain of sand would 
be a mighty boulder crashing down upon 
you with the force of an avalanche. You 
would sympathize with the anonymous poet 
who sang in his wild dreams: "Mosquitoes 
would be mastodons, if we were only small 
enough." "No, thank you," you would 
reply, "they are satisfactorily large as it is." 
\Miat the alliterative versifier has expressed 
so fearsomely, the philosopher expresses more 
austerely in the phrase that all magnitude is 
relative. 

If a pin-hole can convert a drop of water 
into Niagara, why is it not possible to reverse 
the telescope and see things small which are 



192 



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uncomfortably large? It is far more com- 
forting to see mosquitoes dwindling into mites 
than developing into leviathans.. Are you 
stranded at the bottom of a pin-hole or stand- 
ing in triumphant exaltation on a mountain 
peak? The local pin-hole, the national pin- 
hole, the pin-holes of bigotry, of antipathy, 
of selfishness, these are the narrowers of 
men's horizons, these are the factories for 
the world's myopia, which away from the 
oculist we call short-sightedness. The usual 
derricks for hoisting people out of such 
cramped quarters are travel, reading, growth 
in years, humility and in many aggravated 
cases, a good digestion. 

Where you most need the reversed tele- 
scope is in contemplating evil. Some have 
been so overwhelmed by the evil around 
them that for them it has eclipsed God's 
providence, argued away His goodness, and 
even His existence. When things get too 
near, they bulk large and blot out the land- 
scape. What narrows the skyline for you 
may be a mountain range or a city or one 
huge building, but for another the view may 
disappear behind a tree or a curtain, two 



LILLIPUTIAN SPIRITS 193 



feet wide, or an eyelid, half an inch wide. 
A grain of dust in your eye means more to 
you than a sand-storm in the Sahara. Mighty 
armies may be slaying millions across the 
ocean, but that carnage will not shake the 
foundations of divine confidence for a mother, 
who might give way to despair at the loss of 
a tiny babe. 

The pin-hole position limits the outlook and 
keeps evil very near. The more remote the 
distance, the lesser the evil. You will not 
worry about a twinge of pain in one foot of 
an ant because you tower above it. Take 
your position on the sun, and this earth is a 
very tiny thing. Mount higher still and 
stand upon the heights of heaven; throw the 
stretches of eternity between you and your 
evils and then what has become of them? 
A life of suffering is but a moment of pain; 
the carnage of war is a drop of blood; a 
devastating plague is a passing indisposition; 
"a thousand years is but as one day." 

You have the testimony of one who took 
his outlook from the pinnacle of heaven, 
anticipating that place before the time usually 
allotted to ordinary mortals. We must die 



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to get out of our pin-hole entirely. This 
witness, however, "was caught up to the 
third heaven," and he weighed all the evils 
of time in the scales of eternity, and he dis- 
covered that our present tribulation is mo- 
mentary and light but ''worketh for us above 
measure exceedingly an eternal weight of 
glory." 



GIVING BAD NAMES 



GIVING BAD NAMES 



''T OVE me, love my — " Just a moment, 
please! What is its name? On your 
. answer it depends whether we shall 

embrace your canine friend as a card of 
admission into your friendship or load up a 
gun for his extermination. Mothers and 
fathers are worried about the names vAth. 
which to equip their children for life. They 
shrink from Tom, Dick or Harry and orna- 
ment their offspring with Reginald, Algernon 
or Montmorency. Yet when it comes to 
naming a dog, a man Tvill proceed often with 
that reckless disregard of consequences and 
feelings wdth which a small boy will dishonor 
the same animal by a very different kind of 
appendage. 

If names are so destructive to dogs it is not 
a difficult sum in logic to reckon the amount 
of care to be exercised in naming a character. 
You expect a visitor. Only one, perhaps, 



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knows the newcomer. The question is put: 
Who is he? or Who is she? That is a mo- 
mentous question and a perilous instant. By 
the response to that question you will find 
out whether the answerer is an advance agent 
for an ammunition factory and has sold you a 
charge for a gun, or is a judge who has just 
awarded a blue ribbon for the new candidate 
to the exhibition. 

There are certain characters that were 
given a bad name in some remote period of 
antiquity, and now they are fair game for any 
one from the joke column to the editorial 
page. Whether the name is deserved in par- 
ticular cases is never asked. The step-mother 
and the mother-in-law, the poet and the 
tramp, are already cataloged and tagged for 
some people. You may allege unfairness, 
lack of charity, claims of justice, particular 
exceptions. Your appeals are useless. They 
see the name; they close their eyes and fire 
away, and their victims escape — in the 
Mexican fashion. 

Certain early novelists wishing to give a 
special piquancy to their unsavory stories 
ascribed them to priests and nuns. Poets 



GIVING BAD NAMES 



199 



and artists, taking their cue from these evil 
sponsors of rehgion, handed on the bad names, 
and to-day you have a few well-meaning but 
misguided Protestants gunning for the kennel 
so disastrously named. From Thomas Crom- 
well to Oliver Cromwell, England manufac- 
tured bad names for the Catholics and as a 
direct consequence Ulster volunteers import 
arms to shoot the Catholics of Ireland. 

Giving a dog a bad name is a very serious 
and very harmful business for all, except the 
Krupps, the Maxims and the Duponts. A 
man may not have moral murder in his heart 
when he light-heartedly gives out his bad 
names, but the result is bound to be deadly. 
He might have awarded prizes, but unfor- 
tunately he elects to give a present which has 
a muzzle velocity of five hundred feet per 
second. 

These bad names, whether traditional or 
otherwise, save the trouble of thinking. All 
step-mothers are cruel, all Jesuits are cunnmg, 
all monks are intemperate and immoral, all 
Catholics are traitors, these are the phrases to 
get by heart and pass on and make the 
bearers of the names better dead. Sometimes, 



200 MUSTARD SEED 

however, an independent thinker rises up and 
says: "I will find out who presided over the 
baptism of these unfortunate animals, and 
before I reach for my gun, I will find out f 
whether the bad name is deserved." Such 
men as tha,t, not too lazy to use their brains, 
not so cowardly as to be a mere echo of local, 
national or historical gossip, find out that 
after all good can come from Nazareth despite 
its bad name. Such intellectual and moral 
heroes cease gunning and begin cheering. 



YOU BEGIN 



I 



YOU BEGIN 

ONCE upon a time a centipede was 
scurrying along, and in a moment of 
such paralysis as affects a nervous 
person crossing a street in front of swift 
vehicles, it hesitated and stopped. Vera- 
cious history asserts that it never could 
get along again. Although it had a hundred 
legs, it did not move because each one of the 
himdred said to its neighbor, ''You begin." 
There you have a picture of a thousand hke 
paralyses among men. It is difficult to bring 
a man to see the necessity of action; it is far 
more difficult to make him see that he must 
begin. "I had rather tell twenty what it 
were best to do than be one of the twenty to 
follow my own bidding." So Shakespeare 
said many years ago. "We must do some- 
thing" is the unanimous cry, and "You 
begin" is the deadening refrain. Many an 
eloquent speech or stirring editorial or mas- 



i 



204 



MUSTARD SEED 



terly book, hot with meritorious indignation, 
has been foiled of its noble purpose by the 
lamentable inertia of transferred initiative. 

The world is dissatisfied with its profes- 
sional men and brings its complaints to the 
university. The university forwards the com- 
plaints to the college; the college to the high- 
school; the high-school to the grammar-school; 
the grammar-school to the kindergarten; the 
kindergarten to the nursery; the nursery, 
under the promptings of eugenics, transmits 
the difficulty to the grandparents. '*You 
begin" is the chorus of the babies to their 
ancestors, and from ancestor to ancestor back 
to the original perversity of Adam — or the 
atom — is the responsibility shifted until the 
pebble plumped into the sea here, to the tune 
of "You begin," sends ever- widening ripples 
to the far-ofi shores of eternity, where they 
lap with an echo of the same hopeless elegy. 

Our good President cannot open a letter or 
read a telegram or answer a telephone call or 
get a wireless message or see a visitor without 
receiving by these and all means of communi- 
cation a thousand schemes which he is to 
initiate. Whether it be a war in Europe, or 



YOU BEGIN 



205 



the neighbor's daughter at the piano, the 
inferiority of coflFee, or the superiority of 
foreign athletics, the price of eggs or the smok- 
ing of cigarettes by anaemic youths, the 
presence of dust on the street or the absence 
of rain from the sky, all the troubles of land 
and sea, of men and women, are referred 
ultimately to the President, and the world 
waits for him to begin. 

How is this endless chain to be broken? 
By beginning where charity and all other 
\4rtues begin: at home. All reform starts in 
the individual. All reform perfects the in- 
terior and then works to the exterior. Im- 
provement is not imposed upon one from the 
outside. The way of perfection is not: **You 
begin and I follow," but rather ''I begin and 
you follow.'' It is not precept but example 
that is the salt of the earth and the hght of 
the world. 

When Frederic Ozanam heard from scoffing 
unbehevers the taunt: ''Show us your works," 
he did not proceed to write to his parish 
priest, who would proceed to -^Tite to his 
bishop, who would proceed to v^Tite to his 
archbishop, who would proceed to write to 



206 



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his cardinal protector, who would proceed to 
interview the Pope. No, Ozanam headed the 
procession himself. He replied: will show 
you my works," and in a short time he had 
millions in the St. Vincent de Paul Society 
showing the world that Christianity is not 
dead but still lives. It was a weak woman 
with no office, no holy orders, no powers, who 
was the stay of the Church at the end of the 
fourteenth century. St. Catherine of Siena 
had zeal, and zeal is initiative at white heat. 
She began and the Pope himself followed. 



I WANT TO KNOW 



I WANT TO KNOW 

T7T is not one State alone of these United 
States, or one to\vTi or even one individual 
alone that experiences the desire of hav- 
ing the truth manifested. ''I want to know" 
is as universal a cry as ''I want to eat." 
There is hunger and thirst in the soul as well 
as in the body. The power which gave man 
an eye with capacity and tendency for sight, 
an ear with the capacity and tendency for 
sound, gave the soul a curiosity with a capac- 
ity and tendency for knowledge. The reason 
why these commonplace remarks acquire a 
particular and pertinent appropriateness here 
and now is to be found in the multiplication 
to-day of the means of gaining information. 
Horizons are indefinitely extended; the sphere 
of sound prolongs its radiuses to tremendous 
distances. The voice that sailed on the 
waves of air and sped a few yards away, has 
now been launched on a sea of less sluggish 
billows and sweeps in vastly wider surges to 



210 



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thousands of miles. Nor need we to await 
the sound's travel along the channels of wire 
when even swifter channels open up to it 
through all the radiating air. If sound speeds 
so lightly over the oceans of ether, color will 
not be outdone. In fact color has always 
been travelHng on the waves that sound has 
but recently sailed upon, but we do not see 
as far as we hear, simply because we have no 
mechanical eye as delicate as the mechanical 
ear which from wires or from wireless ether 
echoes back to sound the far-off vibrations of 
the voice or metal. 

Until we are able to see through woods or 
mountains and the swelling sides of the 
world, we shall have to content ourselves 
with the lofty eye of the aeroplane and the 
long-distance eye of the telescope to accom- 
pany the extended ear of the telephone. The 
man who wants to know to-day, has ample 
means at his disposal of gaining information. 
If time and inventiveness changed the toy, 
zoetrope, into the long reel of the moving 
picture where flowers grow and butterflies 
unfold and far-off battles are fought, what 
may we not expect of other mechanical de- 



I WANT TO KNOW 211 

vices? When the seismometer grows more 
deUcate, we may be able to catch the footstep 
of father as he leaves his office, or the crash 
when one snowflake faUs upon another. 

But why should eye and ear be the only 
senses with enlarged boundaries? Does it 
savour of the Arabian Nights to dream that 
man one day may be able to attach to his 
nose a sensitive receiver which will bring 
him the fragrance of the tropics, or draw 
across his Hps by some delicate service sips 
of oriental beverages or tastes of Parisian 
chef d'oBuvres ? Wky, we behold daily almost 
as wonderful extensions of knowledge in re- 
sponse to the cry ''I want to know." Sex- 
hygiene makes physicians of primary pupils; 
biology and anatomy transform sweet girl- 
graduates into expert surgeons; committees, 
slummers and novelists have thrown every 
crime upon the revealing screen; advertising 
and pubHcity have lifted the veil from all 
other secrets of dress or disease or what not. 

If aeroplanes, as has been said, have done 
away with surprise in war, are we not rapidly 
coming to the time when the fresh, delightful 
and invigorating shock of surprise will dis- 



212 



MUSTARD SEED 



appear from everything? Will not the appe- 
tite for information grow jaded and pall? 
There is complete assurance from one who in 
olden days wanted to know and who refused 
nothing whatsoever his eyes desired, that all 
the knowledge of the world was vanity and 
that he still wanted to know. The uttermost 
widening of the horizon of sense cannot sate 
a thirst for truth which overleaps such narrow 
restrictions and extends to the boundless 
circle of infinity. But what are the hosts of 
mankind doing to improve the means of 
gaining information for the soul and to keep 
pace with the wonderful inventions for 
enlarging the scope of the senses? Here and 
there recently a few men have begun to make 
retreats to get a nearer view of God. They 
have closed out sounds to hear better, and 
have gone away from engrossing sights that 
they may see farther and deeper, and have 
resolutely held aloof from distracting thoughts 
that their unweighted souls may soar to 
sublime heights and attain unto more dazzling 
visions. Few, too few are they who really 
want to know. 



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